


Fiddler's Green

by thebisfor



Category: Black Sails, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Crossover, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Sort Of, the sea as a metaphor and a character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-04-22 16:04:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14312295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebisfor/pseuds/thebisfor
Summary: James Norrington was once a good man. Long John Silver was once a friend. James Flint used to be someone else. Jack Sparrow did, too. All of these things are true. None of them are going to help them save the Bahamas from the tyranny of England.alt: the gay pirate dante's inferno roadtrip crossover you never knew you wantedthis fic once met both canon and history, looked them in the eye, shook their hands, and spat in their faces.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> im frankly not keeping track of pairings because i don't know and i dont trust myself
> 
> just go with it

It takes someone mad to fall in love with the sea. It claims to be nothing but water, yet bears little resemblance to traditional examples of the element. It is wild and dark, impossible to drink, it rages like a fire. It can dry a man's lips to cracking from proximity alone. It wants to kill every man that sets upon it, and yet some build entire lives on her. They cannot be anything but mad, to love something that cares so little for their lives. Thousands come and go upon her and she shows none of them favor, save a very few remarkable persons. Sometimes, they don't realize her affection. Even the affection of the sea is a dark, terrible, and dangerous thing.

James Norrington built his entire life on the sea, or had it built there for him. His sweat mingled with hers. His eyes looked like trapped seawater, held still at port. His blood, when spilt, has the salt-slick taste of the sea. He mingled so closely that there were times in his life he did not know where he ended and she began.

Jack Sparrow had been consumed by the sea an age ago, taken in whole and regurgitated more times than he could count. He could not say now what had been original to him and what was hers. His laugh sounded like waves, like gulls, like the snap of canvas in wind. His eyes were dark and deep and as unfathomable as her. He had seawater in his soul. 

Both men sailed seas first prowled by other men like them. Men like Edward Teach, Bartholomew Roberts, Robert Maynard, William Kidd and Woodes Rogers. By men like James Flint and Long John Silver. If they were anything, they were a homage to the sea like those men before them, playing out the same battles as had happened a generation before. All of these men, of course, had passed into legend by the time Jack Teague became Captain Jack Sparrow. They became that long before James Norrington first set eyes on the blue, blue waters of the Caribbean. 

Life ends quickly for men in the Bahamas, and things pass out of memory. This is especially true for men of the sea.

It was looking like a short life for James Norrington, for example. His hands clutched the bloody, aching hole in his chest, the sharp spike of wood still protruding obscenely. He stared at it in shock. Oh. It had happened so fast, he hadn't seen it. It barely hurt. This wasn't how he'd thought it would end. 

He'd heard the call of Nassau in his boyhood, like all boys did. It was 1717 and Charlestown burned at the whim of one man, and it terrified him half a world away. It also excited him. He was 14, and he watched his father kiss his mother woodenly on the cheek as he steered James' oldest brother out of the house. He steered him toward the ocean. Toward the fighting. Toward Nassau. James cannot go yet, he's too young. He thinks that he's almost a man, really, old enough to be a midshipman. Old enough at least to run powder between cannon on the gun deck. Old enough his father should know he's learned to swim. He's not useless anymore.

He's too old for his mother to hold him, but she does. She clutches his shoulders tight and refuses to cry. She pulls him close to her skirts, but he's already taller than her. His father returns two years later, without Alexander, without comfort for her. She screams as he tears James from her protective talons and out into the cold grip of the sea. James feels guilty for his own excitement. He never stops feeling that guilt, even when she passes - alone, in England, her sons far away. James feels nothing but joy from jumping into the sea, into those arms that took his older (better) brother. He turned his face to the sea spray in hunger and never in fear. She wasted away in London. The guilt burned, but the sea pulled harder. He loved the sea like he loved no other thing. 

His father taught him to love something else, as well. He had no romance in his soul for the groan of timbers or the hiss of waves. What he loved was nothing more or less than the hunt itself. They dogged pirate and corsair alike with relentless brutality. James learned to fight at his father's shoulder, and reached eighteen bathed in blood. He passed the equator on his nineteeth and the crew cheered as he sat for his first tattoo, his father looking on with a sneer. Too familiar with the men, always. 

Flint was long dead when James first saw the shores of Jamaica. Calico Jack had just been hung. Blackbeard rested beneath the ocean he'd loved like no other mistress. His father hunted the survivors, from the coast of Argentina up beyond the smoking husk of Charlestown itself. They'd begun rebuilding, the process slow. James went with him. He was halfway to twenty when his father breathed his last on a slippery deck off the coast of Carolina. James went home to England. There was nothing there but an empty house he no longer remembered. His father's lack of debts was a small favor. Both of his parents had been stiff-necked skinflints to the core, and he managed to sell the house at a small profit. His pockets had jingled for the first time in his life. His first scars started to heal over. He took a posting as a lieutenant as quickly as he could, and hated every moment he waited in London to go back out to the sea. 

England was cold, and stiff, and gray. It pressed. It chafed. It poured over him and smothered him, until he felt like he was made from plaster. If he moved the slightest inch, he would crack. 

He spent some of his time and coin in a tavern frequented by other navymen and sailors. Men whose eyes looked like his - trapped. Wild. Fearful. None of them belonged in this city of stone, roaming the streets outside Whitehall without purpose. They drank, and fought, and gambled. They had to do something. Anything. Anything that quieted the beating of waves on the pier that was so close and so far away. James didn't - couldn't - felt too close to breaking too often. He wanted the sun back. The smell of coconuts and salt and sugarcane rum. Those were the only things that could soften him. 

He read more often, instead. He bought endless books. He sat on a grassy patch next to a gnarled tree where he could watch ships pass on the Thames. Not the ocean by any means, but as close as he could come until he was called to get underway. The gray-green water matched his eyes, and it mocked him. It brought him pale reminders of a place where it sparkled, blue and free and treacherous. 

"Are you really reading books on piracy while you're on leave?" A cheery voice asked him. It was a midshipman with wild and curly hair who had startled him, appearing behind him suddenly. He was tan, brown hair honeyed with sun, and he still smelled sharply of the sea. He looked like a joyful sprite that had sprung from a wave. His eyes glittered with mirth in the sun. 

"Maybe." James said, his voice guarded, but that dissuaded the younger boy not at all. He collapsed on the ground beside James and stuck out his hand. 

"Theodore Groves." He grinned. He had a handshake as enthusiastic as the rest of him. 

"James Norrington." He'd heard the name Groves before. By the look on Theodore's face, he'd heard James' surname, too. They shared an unspoken agreement not to ask each other about it, which may have been the first foundation of their friendship. 

Groves settled at his side like a friendly burr, and James' brittle outside couldn't shake him. Theo was loud, and bold, and impulsive - everything James wasn't. He said things he shouldn't, sometimes. He did things he shouldn't, either. An hour after he'd told James he'd sailed in on the ship James was to sail out on in a few weeks, he'd pressed James to a wall in a back alley and kissed him until he'd forgotten to be surprised. James hadn't even known he would like that. Theo seemed to never have doubted. By the end of the day, Theo was staying with James in his lodgings until they shipped out again. James half wondered if he was going mad. He smiled more in two days than he had in the past five years. He thought they must be terribly obvious, and waited for the noose to tighten around them both. Theo never seemed to fear. 

Theo talked to him about the breeze in palm trees, about gunpowder and shot, about pretty women and rum and pirates. Endlessly about pirates. Theo loved stories about buccaneers. James loved listening, in turns baffled, annoyed, and entranced. 

"I heard Captain Flint was a navy man once." Theo told him, tickling James' side with his toes as they sprawled on the floor of their room, lazy in the afternoon sun. "I hear he went mad with hatred for England, and wanted to destroy it all." 

"He did an excellent job at that." James said dryly back, catching Theo's ankle. England wasn't that bad, he thought. Not all the time. Not from far away. "Plenty of them used to be navy." You learned that fast in the Bahamas. 

"He was an officer." Theo's foot went still. 

James grimaced. There was a way Theo talked about these men that made him nervous. Frightened him. He realized that it was admiration Theo felt, and that could be heard in his voice. "That makes it worse. Abandoning duty for greed and murder? He was no hero. No pirate is." James' voice was firm. All he saw in his reflection now was Alexander. He couldn't picture it older. 

Theo pulled his leg back and they bickered until bed over the nature of good and evil. They were too young and too jaded for a fair discussion, and no compromise could be reached. 

In a few short days James' heart lept as they eased out of dock and Theo's knee brushed his. He bid goodbye to grey, stooping England and could already smell the tang of ocean air in the breeze. Theo, James was amused to learn, still got seasick for the first half day of the journey. James gave it three more before he learned what Theo's skin tasted like when spunk and seawater mix on it, on his knees in the lower gundeck. It felt like nothing else he'd ever known. 

Even Theo couldn't compete with ocean spray and sunlight beating down on his face. Theo never seemed to mind that his new friend favored nights spent reading near the rail, as opposed to nights tangled with him. He continued to stick to James like a burr. They spent time off duty discussing James' books and they path before them. 

They were ferrying the new Governor to Port Royal, the one place James had not been before. It was rubble still when he'd last been by. It was still rebuilding now. Earthquakes were the cause, not raiders, and James wondered at the wisdom of continuing to fight the ground itself. The Governor himself was cheerful company; his daughter audacious. They would be arriving to a fully repaired Governor's mansion. The Navy barracks, James had been told, would take two more years to complete.

"Captain" hardly felt real on James' shoulders when he and Theo met their final piece, a few years later. Andrew Gillette looked pristine in almost the same midshipman's uniform Theo had worn years before. Theo looked trim and handsome in his lieutenant's uniform now, and James felt guilty at the disparity in their ranks. Gillette was young, sharp-faced and clear-eyed and had flaming red hair. He was sharp in every place Theo was round and strong. His pale face had a permanent sunburn and he looked like he was angry with the world about it. 

The captain Gillette sailed under was - as Theo put it - a right bastard, too free with the lash by all accounts. It took hardly any time at all for James to finagle a few trades and a promotion, thankfully. In mere months he had a second lieutenant at his back, who came with an irrepressible and irreverent tongue, and a poorly stifled Irish lilt.

 

And then, like his father before him, James took them hunting.

From Nassau to North Carolina they sailed, chasing a dying breed and hurrying it along to its death. Norrington's name was known again in the Caribbean, and Groves and Gillette could not be separated from it. 

James caught them together a few scant years after they settled into their pattern. Though 'caught' would perhaps not have been the best word for it. Theo seemed to have coaxed Andy into James' bed before James got home, and they were sprawled naked like an offering when he came through the door. He didn't bother to ask questions - he just crawled between them and collapsed, letting them take him like a current. 

Everything James had needed was now here, on the sea. Them. The air. The salt. It bleached his clothing, his hair, it left grit in his eyelashes and he loved every damned moment. Their best hunts were a small ship; a sparse crew; the three of them worked until they shook and chased pirates and each other like schoolboys, until they fell. Some of James' favorite hunts had no prizes to show at all. 

"I bet there's treasure out there." Theo whispered once in his ear, as they stared at the moon beyond the horizon. 

"Mountains of gold under a fire-breathing dragon." Andy laughed against James' skin. 

Theo laughed too, tackling Andy to the bed and struggling to pin him. He murmured to them both, "Let me tell you a tale about a spaniard named Vazquez..." 

 

God, his breath was coming harder now. He was shaking and couldn't stop. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ He heard the heavy tread of Davy Jones' peg leg coming closer. Everything was still clear, but it wouldn't resolve into pictures. It didn't make sense. He wished Theo and Andy were here. He wished he knew where Andy was. At least he knew Theo lived. For now. They'd all be dead when Beckett was done, he knew that now. There would be no survivors. 

 

When he'd first noticed Elizabeth - when - god - years ago - 

When he'd first realized she'd gone from an impertinent gangly thing, always underfoot, to something wild and unknowable - he had wondered if Andy and Theo would feel betrayed. Betrayed might not have been the right word. Andy didn't speak to him for three days. Theo had looked at him with pity.

"Is it because she's a woman?" He had asked awkwardly one night.

Theo has looked at him sadly. "James, I love women. You love things that swallow you whole." 

James decided just to trust that Andy would come around again, and one day Theo would stop looking at him like that. 

Not that anything in James' life had ever prepared him for approaching someone else emotionally. Theo had done all the work before. He didn't know how to be the aggressor. He wasn't sure he liked it. He didn't know how to tell her he saw the beach in her eyes, the breakers beating on the shore, rocks hidden below. He wondered if he could drown in them and finally feel at home. If he would have a place to go back to that the rest of the world could accept. 

James was completely and utterly used to being chased, though. Elizabeth had no interest in doing so, and made that more than clear. He did his best - which was pisspoor - and had to admit even as he sailed trying his damnedest to rescue her, the Turner boy had whatever she wanted. He always had. James...lacked. Oh, at times Elizabeth still led him, and he let her. But she led him inexorably toward Will Turner, where her true passion lay. He could say one thing of that entire cursed journey, though, and that was that it had led him back to pirates. Of course. They were as part of this sea as the dolphins and the sea turtles. But this one - 

This one - 

He said, "So you have heard of me," and something in James lights on fire. Their eyes meet and James feels a raging sort of joy. Of course he's heard of Jack Sparrow. The name's commonplace. He can feel Andrew's indignant rage on one side, Theodore's thrill on the other. He can't look away from Sparrow. He can't stop finding reasons to reach out - Sparrow looks like a naiad. A selkie, maybe, something so much more of the sea than James that he wants to never let go. He wants to know how. He wants to be that. Jack is wild braids, dark eyes, golden teeth, and the last man to sack Nassau. Jack Sparrow never had to fire a shot.

Sparrow breathed the sea the same as James did. He smelled like the worst of the Caribbean made flesh - rum, salt, tar, blood, sweat, dirt. God above, James could have lived with the damned monstrous living dead pirates tearing his life to pieces, if only it wasn't for the way he kept looking away from Elizabeth to stare at Sparrow. In Sparrow's eyes he saw a raging hurricane to drown out Elizabeth's summer storm. He could die there. Jack Sparrow was a ship killer, and James could never resist them. 

When he tried to hang Jack it was with the wind howling in his ears and the surf crashing in his veins. It was almost too loud for him to keep moving. Something inside of him screamed as Sparrow walked up to the gibbet. It roared as the trap door went - and it wasn't lust, it wasn't a passing fancy, it was the ocean - the Caribbean sea herself rioting against it. 

The next time he remembered breathing was after Sparrow had broken away in a mad dash for freedom. Of course Turner helped. Of course Elizabeth stood with him. But he didn't feel real again until Sparrow swayed close to him and their breath mingled. Their eyes met and the sea was quiet. All James could hear was Sparrow.

"I was rooting for you, mate."

Norrington blinked and he was gone. He felt a pull like the tide in Sparrow's direction and he thought _oh no, this is what going mad feels like_. He still gave the pirate three days before he gave chase. There were the rest of the pirates to hang, after all.

The Dauntless could never hope to catch the Black Pearl, of course. Andrew and Theodore watched him with wary eyes. They didn't know what to make of his new hopeless obsession. Theo worried. Andy scowled. 

The stopped him belowdecks one day, hands fisted in his coat. "Stop, James. Why are you still letting it consume you? Letting him consume you?" 

James looked at Theo, lost for words, and Theo knew. 

"God, James, if you'd get over your need to be swallowed whole."

James couldn't argue with it but neither could he stop. It wasn't Jack's face that woke him in the night in a cold sweat, though. Oh, he thought of Jack - dark thoughts, shameful ones, tied up in the smell of sea salt and tar and the flash of gold teeth - but those eased him to sleep. It was different grins that woke him, skeletal pirates moving jerkily through his mind. Their tendons hung useless and grotesque from their arms, scraps of meat still on their bones. They laughed and came for him and when they came too close, some weren't pirates at all. They were his brother, his father, the men he lost at the Isle de Muerta. Coming for him.

When they hung the last of the pirates in Port Royal, he didn't hang their bodies in the bay. It wasn't out of mercy, or decency. The sight was just too familiar as they decomposed. 

He still chased Sparrow. He let other prizes pass. Better ones, more important ones. He neglected duties. Theo and Andy continued arguing with him, their fights becoming more and more frequent as they tried to shift his focus off of Sparrow. It wouldn't work. Something in the deep, terrifying depths of James' soul had roared out to meet something in Jack and he couldn't stifle it back down if he tried. 

He remembered the best day of that chase, before it all went to hell. They'd caught the Pearl unaware in the early morning fog. For a split second, they had been so close to her that James could hear Sparrow laugh. He wondered if, over the sound of creaking timber and snapping canvas, Sparrow could hear him laughing, too. Then, they had sprang apart and James gave chase, as he always did. Sparrow outran them, as he always did. The wind had been brisk, the sun high, and they'd kept her in their sights the better part of a day. 

That was only a few weeks before he'd lost everything. The sea loved Jack Sparrow, James thought, almost as much as it loved tricking him. He'd been certain after that day off the coast of Tripoli that the sea hated him. He never could resist a ship-killer. He'd sailed straight in, though it had sprung from nowhere and the clouds rolled black, and the Dauntless never made it out again. How he'd survived, he'd never figured out. Theo had thankfully been at the fort. Andrew had been at his right hand. James could never forget that. Andrew had been touching him, their fingers had brushed, and then the sea had let loose all her fury and James had let go.

That was the thing, wasn't it? That thing between he and Jack had always been best as a game. They matched move for move. When James sailed with him, it had felt like an extension of that - but he couldn't get Andrew's face out of his mind. Or Theo's face. He had needed to go back. He needed to right what he'd made wrong when he'd thrown good sense to the wind and taken the game too seriously. 

He wondered, in what had followed, what would have happened if he had behaved differently. If he'd changed tack at the sign of the storm and put it and the Pearl to their rudder. Would Andy be with them? Would he have been able to stop Beckett? Would he still be here, gasping on the cold and clammy deck of the Dutchman with his fingers growing cold and his shirt sticking to his belly, wet with blood? 

Blood as salty as the ocean, someone had said once. An old woman in a tavern, maybe, telling fortunes for coin. Or an angry ship's doctor. Even odds. Too salty. Too sharp and thin and cruel. One day he'd crumble like Lot's wife. Is this what that felt like? He knew he was dying. He was suddenly struck by the thought that he didn't know what happened after that. He'd long ago given up belief in heaven. There was no golden place where his family waited for him. He, like his father and brother before him, was a sailor. At the end of the day, all sailors were devils. James had done far too many things he wasn't proud of, that he couldn't deny. Most of all for Beckett. He wondered if the other men like him had felt remorse as they died. Hume, Rodgers, his father. Did they regret the wars they'd waged on men trying to find freedom, food, and an end to the yolk of cruelty?

Probably not.

James' vision was getting dim and blurry. The deck of the Dutchman seemed to tilt and list more than was normal and he squinted. He could just barely make out a boot and a peg leg coming to stand over him, with Davy's ominous _step-thunk, step-thunk_. That sound was one more thing that haunted James' dreams, like undead pirates and Andy's face. Well. At least all that would soon stop. Everything would soon stop. 

"Not afraid." James wheezed through clenched teeth.

The man he saw when he peered up was not Davy Jones. For one, he had a significant lack of tentacles. He was handsome, some years older than James, and had a crutch tucked under one arm. His long, graying hair curled around his shoulders and a neat beard framed a mischievously grinning mouth. He was completely bereft of additional sea life. That was...probably a good sign. James squinted up at him, belly heaving as he still tried to breathe around the wood in his chest. "Good. No time for fear now."

The stranger gripped the spike in his chest and James hissed. "He's coming. Off you go." He pulled sharply, the wood wrenching free with a terrible sucking sound, and he shoved James off the Dutchman and into the sea.


	2. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is shaping up to a sort of gay pirate dante's inferno roadtrip, i guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe the real lesson was the endless walking we did along the way into the depths of hell

James woke covered in sand. It was under his nails, in his eyes, inside his mouth. It was gritty, and awful, and tasted of nothing. He sat up slowly. He was amazed he could even do so, and touched his chest, expecting...something. There was nothing. He looked down. A dizzying amount of dried blood covered his front, and through a ragged hole in his shirt he could see skin, shiny, pink, and raw. No spike. No hole. Just new, naked skin. It was pinker and paler than the skin around it, but otherwise there was no sign of what had happened. Besides the blood, of course. How could he be alive? How could he be healed? He felt...fine. 

He looked up again. There was nothing to see but sand for miles. White sand, fine and gritty, in rolling hills and wide, featureless plains. He thought perhaps he'd somehow washed ashore, but there was no ocean here to wash up out of. Had it all been some kind of bad dream? He was never so lucky. The sun beat down unbearably hot, but that was familiar. That felt like home.

"Oh good, 'e's awake," The sudden voice startled James and he whirled around. It was the stranger from the Dutchman. The last man James remembered seeing, before - nothing. Not a dream, then. 

In full sunlight, the man still looked completely human. James wondered what life he lived that that was a common concern. He was average height, a little shorter than James when standing, he would guess. His hair was dark, but threaded with silver. It fell past his shoulders in surprisingly artful curls. His mouth and eyes were framed with the slightest of laugh lines, and there was silver in his beard, too. James would put him in his early fifties, perhaps late forties. He leant heavily on a wooden crutch, and James realized it was his uneven step he'd taken for Jones' on the deck of the Dutchman. 

"Who are you?" He asked the man, his voice hoarse and cracking. It was dry here, so dry. 

"Oh, nobody important." The man had a broad, friendly-sounding accent. He limped closer to James, his peg leg sinking into the soft sand deep with each step. It looked a struggle for him to move through the landscape, though he didn't stop or hesitate. "Suffice t'say I'm like you, ain't I, lost in a strange land lookin' for a way t'get on home, and you can trust old John on that!"

 

"Nobody really talks like that." James muttered. He squinted at the other man, taking in his sun-bleached clothes and tanned face, the crooked grin that seemed so terribly familiar, and sighed. Of course. What had he expected? "More blasted pirates." 

 

"Oh aye, I know yer problem with pirates." John was still smiling, his eyes crinkled in mirth. It was oddly threatening. "But I'm well retired, y'see. I got a missus and an inn to get back to, but can't well do none of that if we's lollygaggin' here."

 

"Where did you _come_ from?" James grumbled, continuing to examine the patch of new skin on his chest. It didn't even hurt when he pressed on it, just left pale marks where his fingers had been. 

"Here'n'there." John said distractedly. "Well, not here. Needed some help findin' the way here, y'see. Which ye provided nicely, an' I thank you for it, so you have a good day, Admiral." 

John started to limp away again, but it was slow going.

"How do you know who I am?" James scrambled to his feet and followed John, his long legs eating up the distance. 

"Ain't one salt tar in the Caribbee who don't know who you are." John snorted and spat on the sand. "Like I says, I appreciate the lift but I don't need no company on this sojourn, thank ye kindly." 

"You do not honestly talk like that naturally." James grumbled under his breath again. "Where are you going?"

John sighed and stopped. "Yer not coming with, so it doesn't matter, do it ?" 

James was sure that every time he grumbled about the rather hokey accent, the man laid it on thicker. "Why wouldn't I? Should I instead sit around on the sand forever?"

"Y'should - go do whatever it is dead folks do." John made a shooing motion at him. "G'on. Get. Haunt something. Not me." 

"Excuse me?" James stopped in his tracks. 

John sighed and looked at him, assessing. James noticed that his eyes were blue, bewitchingly clear and cold. They were also distant, like James as an irritating obstacle but not something worth his full attention. 

"Yer dead. Nobody survives gettin' gored on a marlinspike, lad. Y'know that. So get on...bein' dead, however y'do that in this place." 

"I have work to do." James said. He sounded - timid, even to his own ears. He swallowed and gathered himself, for strength of character he wasn't sure he still had. "I can't - be dead. I have too much to do." 

"Shite." John stopped, leaning hard on his crutch. He looked over his shoulder at James. "You've got some unfinished business, have you, Admiral?"

"You forgot the accent." James said mildly. He stared into the distance. Yes, he had to get back. Now that he was removed from that horrific ghost ship, now that he wasn't splintering at the hands of Beckett, he could hear it again. The seas screamed to be freed, to be protected from evil men. It was the call he'd heard his entire life, though he was only now starting to wonder if he'd always heard it wrong. 

"Fuck you." John said, his voice mild. "I'm not feelin' too charitable 'bout havin' the Butcher at my back on this walk, ye'll forgive me." 

"Is that what they call me now?" James wondered. It was fair. "It will be worse if we don't stop him." 

"Him which?" John started walking again. "Davy? Man's just doin' what nature made him. Beckett? He ain't the first of his kind these islands have seen." John's cheery face turned dark and tense. "Nothin' you can do about that." 

 

"So you'll not try at all?" James asked. He followed John. "You don't care even a little?"

John whirled, surprisingly fast. "Aye, and ye do? Ye who sinks ships under the white flag, ye who hangs children and runs bairns through for what coin they took or what their parents done for bread? Ye don't give a damn either, and it's a bit late for you to grow a conscience now."

James stopped, looking down at the pale sand. "Late, yes. Yes, it is a little late." He looked up again. "I can help it stop, though. I should. That's my responsibility, for beginning it." 

John studied him for a moment, making James want to squirm under the scrutiny. His eyes were more shrewd than James expected. Wasn't that typical of the pirates he met, too? He was just thankful this one didn't make his heart do the uncomfortable flips that Sparrow did. 

"Well." He sighed. "Can't stop ye from followin'. And once y'talk to 'im, either he'll run ye through again or he'll be off after ye to help, so y'may as well come along." He shook his head.

"He who?" James continued following the older pirate, up a sandy hill that they seemed to skid back down every few steps. 

 

"Man as I came lookin' for." John said distractedly, wobbling to the top of the hill and staring around for their bearings. 

James looked too. There was nothing but glittering pale sand as far as he could see. He was parched and nauseous. He was always dizzy his first days on land, but this was worse than normal and he wondered if a dead man could vomit. There was no water to be seen, he thought, until John pointed to a small glint on the horizon. 

"There be the sea." And John turned his back to it, squinting out. He pointed to a smudge of shadow on the opposite horizon. "So there's where we're goin'." 

"Not to the sea?" James sounded both doubtful and wistful. If he could only walk back to the sea, maybe things would make sense again. 

"Nah." John started to slide down the hill in the direction he'd pointed. "Think he'll be inland." 

James stared a minute more at the glitter of water in the distance. He followed John finally, sliding down the sand after him. "Sorry, how do you know where you're going?" 

John started off, leg and crutch still digging deep and awkward in the loose sand. "Don't, really. Just got a hunch." 

James sighed. The sea was as good as any hunch, but he had no other companionship in this wasteland. John made it sound like he had a way out, too, and that was not to be abandoned. 

So they walked.

And they walked. 

And they walked. 

They walked for hours, the sun beating down, no water or vegetation in sight. There was nothing but the sand. James grew tired, and couldn't imagine how John felt, having to struggle twice as hard to get half as far. James was already winded, the sweat rolling down his back. He abandoned the godawful waistcoat behind him, and shedding a layer helped for a little while. 

John had to stop, finally, leaning on his crutch. "Bollocks." He sighed, catching his breath. He looked up, straightening, and swore a stronger oath. "Fuck, this place _is_ Hell." 

"What?" James followed his gaze, looking over his shoulder. His heart sank. They'd traveled barely any distance at all. It was maybe a dozen meters to where he'd dropped his waistcoat, lying there red and gold in the white sand. "We've been walking for hours." 

"And we've not made it half a league." John growled. "Don't suppose yer idea of hell is a very, very long walk on the beach?"

"No, I can't say it is." James felt the discouragement creeping up his spine. _Sit,_ it said. _You're never getting anywhere anyway._

"No stoppin' now." John seemed to gather himself, turning his back on the disappointing view and striking out again. "Keep walkin', Admiral." 

James was shaking with the desire to turn back. He didn't want to keep walking into nothing. He wanted the sea. He was sure that if he turned back, the walk would be easier. A few strides and the ocean would leap to meet him and he'd be home. 

John wasn't waiting, though. He picked up the pace and was leaving James behind. James tore his feet from the soft sinking sand and followed the pirate inland reluctantly. He tried to keep his eyes forward and not watch their progress behind. 

"This doesn't look like any hell I've ever heard described." He felt as though if he kept the conversation going, he'd somehow down out the crash of waves in his head. 

 

"'Tis the Locker. Jones' own handbasket to carry sailors to hell in. I always heard it was different for every man. Thanks for this, then, I s'pose." Silver sighed through his nose. 

"The Locker." James wasn't sure if he could still muster any skepticism. 

"You've heard the stories." John sounded certain. "Every man-jack upon these waters has. Even if y'didn't believe it at the time."

James grimaced. He had. He'd heard plenty of them with the Dutchman's deck rocking under his feet and the stink of fish always in his nose. He wondered if this was where those men he sank with the Dutchman's cannons came. Did they make it safely to the other side, or were they too roaming this endless sand?

"Ain't supposed to be like this." John muttered to himself. "There was supposed to be peace." 

James knew when he wasn't the one being talked to, and so he said nothing. 

"What heading are you walking to, precisely?" he asked eventually, when they'd trudged across the sand for what felt like hours.

"Inland." John sighed. "We walk away from the sea, until we find a place where a man takes an oar for a shovel."

James stared at him. "If you tell me we're looking for the actual Odysseus, I quit." 

John turned and looked at him with real amusement in his eyes. They were remarkably playful, but still left James feeling cold and dry. He'd never seen eyes so frozen and resolute. _Not a drop of ocean in them, just ice._ he wondered at it. He'd never met a sailor who didn't remind him of the sea at all. 

"No, not lookin' for no Greek tragedies here." John sounded like he was laughing, but James wasn't sure he understood the joke. "Just lookin' to pull an old friend from his peace." 

The ground was finally evening out, the sand growing harder under their feet. Without the soft sand sucking them down, they seemed to make better time. James watched the bare sand give way to scrubby grass and patches of dry, hardy plantlife. At least they were getting somewhere. There was now a path before them. It looked like a proper road, complete with ruts from the wheels of carts. 

"You do know the way out of this place?" James asked finally, to break the growing silence. 

"I heard tell of a path or two." John hedges around the question. "All of 'em difficult."

James watched him. "And you came anyway." 

"Figure out when we get there." John says, determined. 

"You'd not come without a way out unless this was important to you." James hazarded a guess. There was something about John that said he did things for himself and himself only - though that might have been James' opinions of pirates shining through. "All this for one man?"

John doesn't answer, but keeps walking. 

"What about Beckett? You don't care at all for stopping him?"

"Do you?" John snapped back over his shoulder. "Some job you've done of stoppin' him thus far. He wouldn't stand for this, an' I'm gonna tell him, and that'll pull his sorry carcass from here. Mayhap then we'll find it in the goodness of our wily black hearts t'pull you all out of this mess. Mayhaps not." 

"Who is he?" James asked again, growing frustrated. 

"You don't need to know yet." John grunted. The hard-packed road was hindering his step less than the soft sand, but the jarring step seemed to hurt him more. James wondered if this was John's personal hell after all. 

"Sure he'd like to be compared to Odysseus, though." John muttered to himself again and chuckled quietly. James didn't think he'd be let in on the joke. 

James' step had started to slow as well. The nausea was stronger, and his urge to turn back was overpowering. He stopped for a moment, hands on his knees as he took great, gulping breaths of air. The world spun and rocked and he longed for timbers under his feet and something that made sense. He felt dried out, like jerky, scraped thin. He needed to turn back. Why would his instincts call so loudly for it if it wasn't true?

"Admiral?" John had turned to look at him, eying him warily. "Feelin' all right?" 

James took another deep breath. If he could only convince the other man to turn back. "I think we need to go the other way."

"Don't be a fucking idiot." John snapped. "We've walked too long to get this far." 

James shook his head. "I need to go back to the sea."

John swore under his breath and hopped over to James. He grasped his arm with large, strong hands and pulled hard, tugging him down the road. James hadn't expected the power in the other man's grip and staggered after him for a few steps. He was struck once more by the thought that something lay below his new 'friend's surface, and he would not enjoy finding out what. 

"We ain't turning back now because you're a little afraid of the dark." John gritted out. 

James looked up at the word _dark_ and wondered when the forest looming before them had appeared. He didn't remember seeing it as they walked up, but it was there that the road led. The path disappeared into the darkness of the trees, and he couldn't see light or an end to it at all. He heard no birds, no animals. There wasn't even a breeze to shake the leaves. 

"Don't go tellin' me you're a coward now, Admiral. Man of yer reputation, feared by every honest thief on the seven seas, afraid of the dark?" 

"I'm not afraid." James murmured. He wanted to go back. Past the sand. Into the water. 

"Best keep on, then." John said like it was the most logical thing in the world, his cheery demeanor back in full force. There was still something cold behind his eyes. "Light's wastin' and I'll leave ye here behind, you'd best believe I would." 

When had the sun started to sink? It had stayed directly overhead so long James had started to wonder if it ever moved. He didn't want to be left alone in this place. If he went forward, at least there would be company. He wouldn't be in the dark, alone, on the edge of the wood. 

"I'm coming." 

The path was wide and clear before them. They stepped onto it easily and John made a noise as if to say ' _there, that wasn't so hard.'_ But James looked down the path and saw nothing but darkness and no end in sight, and it made him feel like he did sometimes when he looked over the rail at sea. Nothing but open ocean below, growing darker and darker, and no way to know what may lie beneath. The forest was silent as the grave. There was no telling what may lie within. John's mysterious friend? Perhaps. James felt nothing but dread as they stepped into the darkness and under the canopy of trees.


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> james, stop looking in his eyes, thats how people get hypnotized

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would like to assure you that there's totally a fanmix for this

Walking into that forest was like walking into nothingness. It was so dark James could see no more than ten feet around at a time. He kept close to John as the path narrowed and the sand turned to loam under his feet. His nausea persisted. Sweat trickled down his spine and made him cold as he struggled to keep pace with John's determination. 

"Keep it lively, Admiral." John barked, the sound deafening in the silence of the wood. "It's only trees." 

His face betrayed him. John looked up into the canopy with the same trepidation that James felt in his bones. Not of the sea, then, but he knew trouble when it surrounded him. 

"Trees." James huffed. "Well, if that's all." 

When they stopped speaking, the silence folded back in around them. It had presence, a stifling heat, that pressed uncomfortably close. There were no animals in the trees. Nothing on the ground. No wind stirred the leaves; no sound could be heard but their own steps disturbing the fallen leaves. James' skin crawled. Even John's breath was too loud. Neither man wanted to speak again. They passed an hour or so in complete silence. It was the perfect sort of quiet to make one's thoughts turn in on themselves, and James was always the sort of man to brood. 

His mind trailed past the twisting in his gut and settled once again on Theo. On the man he had left behind aboard Beckett's ship. Remembered Theo's constant enthusiasm and open admiration for Sparrow and wondered if he'd keep his tongue in front of Beckett. 

Likely Beckett wouldn't care who the best pirate Theo had ever seen was. Likely he wouldn't appreciate the remarks about it at inopportune times. Hopefully Theo wouldn't die for it. Dead like Weatherby Swann was, now, he realized. Like many were about to be. 

Like Andrew must be. Like Sparrow was.

So many people that he would never, ever be able to apologize to. 

Before that crewman had gored him, Elizabeth had looked at him with such betrayal. The side he'd chosen. The people he had murdered for what he always accused men like Sparrow of - greed. Greed, and a lack of human empathy. Wasn't that ironic? In the end, he'd been consumed by ambition and greed and had received only what he deserved. 

His pace slowed more, like wading through deep water. His heart sank and he felt tears threatening him. Even breathing seemed difficult, with the guilt pressing down on him along with the silence. .He staggered after John, his legs not feeling like his own. His breath was too loud. He looked ahead, squinting in the darkness. He could barely see John's back anymore. John's breathing was loud and labored as well, and he was muttering quietly to himself. James lurched forward, the sound in the depths of the silence seeming like a breath of fresh air. 

"John." He huffs awkwardly, and wants to laugh at the fact that he still feels odd using the man's given name in a situation like this, of all things. 

"Admiral." John wheezed, distracted. "The fuck do you want." 

"The quiet." James swallowed, trying to battle the feeling of pressure on his throat like a noose. "We have to - "

"Fuck, it's the forest." John groaned. "Of course. What does it want?" 

James casts his mind around frantically. "Sound helps."

"Might help us," John agrees, looking around at the branches reaching down like claws. "But I don't think the trees like it." 

He was right. Whenever they spoke, the forest seemed to lean in. Being silent would suffocate them, but he didn't want to learn what happened when the trees' patience broke. 

Half remembered, some mythos reared in the back of his mind. "Try singing." 

John squinted back at him in confusion. 

James made a frustrated sound, the bile rising in his chest as the quiet made his nausea worse, the pull backwards almost inescapable now. "Damn you, sing - " He tries to think of something himself, raising his voice in a unpracticed but clear baritone. 

" _The work was hard and the wages low -_ " Instant relief, the pressure gone, the trees straight backed and only trees once more. 

" _Leave her Johnny, leave her!_ " John joined in rapidly, both of them staring about in wonder as the woods stopped being _Woods_. 

Their fear dissipated - James' guilt eased. Even his stomach seemed to settle, as long as the two kept singing. He could step easier and felt less of a drag backwards to the dark of the sea. 

Luckily they both knew the first song, and if they sang they could keep walking with a spring in their step. It carried them a fair distance, and when they could remember no more verses for it they both knew the words to Down to Old Maui. This was how they passed the distance, with shared shanties and the odd ballad. Their embarrassment over singing in front of each other was short-lived, and the mood was almost jovial. They made a game of it, seeing which they both knew. John tried to shock or startle Norrington with some of the more vulgar songs he'd learned. James proved he could hold his own there, though he was still pink around the ears as he sang. Some of John's songs were sad and sweet and in a different tongue, or were in English but said nothing of the sea at all. James didn't know those. 

There was an especially sweet and plaintive air about waiting for a man gone to sea that made John's voice go soft and lost. The open want in his voice made James wonder again who they were traveling though the wood to find. What was he to John? He'd spoken of a wife and an inn. James would have thought those things would anchor him to the world of the living. Who was the man they looked for? Why did he make John want to fling himself into the land of the dead after him? Were they only devoted old shipmates? 

He had to shake the thought from his mind. It was the who that mattered more than the why, at least for now. That, and whether this easy company between them would last once the trees were behind them. The world had lightened around them as they walked. The forest now glowed greenish gold, as opposed to the deep, oppressive blackness they'd walked into at the start. 

"The trees are thinning." He told John as his song slowed to a stop. He didn't mention to him that he'd abandoned his accent hours ago. John's real voice was smooth, soft, and pleasant to listen to. 

The trees parted before them and they stepped into a small clearing. They both turned their faces up to the sky, the first of it they'd seen in what seemed like forever. They both took deep breaths, reveling when their own quiet didn't bring the fear crashing back in. It could only be a brief respite, though. The path continued on, into the trees perhaps fifty paces ahead. It was a moment to sit, and nothing more. 

The ground was carpeted in clover and honeysuckle, soft and welcoming mix of green, white, and purple. Like something from a pastoral, James thought. He followed John onto the soft groundcover. John perched himself on a crooked and blocky boulder while James sank to the ground, folding his long legs like a boy on a picnic. They sat there for a moment in silence, breathing in the clear air and soaking up the sunlight high overhead. 

"The sun was going down when we walked in." John said, ruining James' appreciation of it.

"We didn't walk all night?" James asked, doubtful. 

"Didn't seem like. And mark me, I'd be the one t'know it." Ah. The accent was back. 

"Time must pass differently here." Norrington mused. 

"Aye, could be." John squinted suspiciously into the trees. There was still no other sound or movement to be seen there. "Don't think we should idle too long anywhere, Admiral." 

"You know, you could call me Norrington. Or James, if you must. I feel unsettled calling you by your Christian name if you will not do the same for me. Or you could give me something else to call you." 

"That so, Admiral." John snorted. "Tell you what, I've gotten a new little nickname over the years may suit - some of them call me Barbecue, if you like. But that's all ye'll be pulling from me right now. Fish for other information." 

James sighed. It hadn't been a particularly adept attempt to discern more about his new companion, but he also would greatly have appreciated John dropping his title. He was not calling the man Barbecue. 

His next sally forth was rather more blunt. Maybe that would have a better effect. "Who is the man we're searching for? What is he to you?" 

John blew angrily through his nose and hauled himself back to his feet. "Not as you have any right to know," he started, "but he was a friend. We - disagreed, long time ago, an' I...did what I thought was our only option." 

He looked far away for a moment. 

"You killed him?" James assumed. 

John whirled on him, his eyes like chips of ice James had seen once, far to the north. "Fuck you." 

"I'd never," John took a deep breath, "could never. Would never, would rather've died myself than put him in this shithole. What that man - that friendship - that trust meant t'me? Fuck you."

James was quiet, watching him. Wondering why he always underestimated men on the other side of the flag. The quiet stretched.

"Fever took him." John said eventually. "I...forced 'im into, well. Exile. Gave him an out he din't want. Thought, maybe, I'd finagled him a little peace." He looked around the clearing. "Died anyway. Died like a dog anyway. Not even a year after. Him and his - they was all tossed in a mass grave. Burned. Three days afore I got there. Three days too late." 

John's face was haunted and hollow. "Mayhap I did kill him, then. I put 'im there. Thought he'd wiggle his way out again. Plague took 'em all and they never got out." 

He shook his head, seeming surprised he'd said that all aloud. "I'v "e lived with that damn near twenty years. Thought it was the end of our story."

James didn't want to speak - he was worried it would break the spell, and he'd be plunged back into ignorance and darkness. 

"Then, I heard stories." John looked up suddenly, trapping James in his cold eyes. "Heard tales of skeleton men what couldn't die. Heard the Kraken swallowed Jack Sparrow whole." He took long, uneven steps up to Norrington. "Heard the Flying Dutchman were seen, again and again, by every last filthy stealing buccaneer on the sea. Pirate Hunter was turned Butcher at 'er helm next to Davy Jones hisself." 

John heaved himself up off the stone and James rose as well, tense and nervous at what may be coming next. John turned, finding him with those eyes again, holding him still with a look. "That they been hanging good people and bad people and bairns alike up on that fine fort of yours. Not for the _Navy._ Not for fucking _England_ , even, christ no - just for business." 

James wanted nothing more than to turn away, to break their eye contact, but there was no running from the truth.

"An' then I heard something else." John leant even closer. Norrington wondered if there'd ever been a pirate who had heard of personal space. But still, John's eyes burned into his and made him shiver. 

"I heard someone saw Jack Sparrow." John's eyes were terrible to look in. James' focus sharpened and he looked deeper, hunting for the lie in the other man's horribly earnest eyes. 

"Sparrow's dead." That was a fact. That, James knew. Davy had known it, Beckett had known, and so James _knew._ Elizabeth would have said, if - 

No, she wouldn't have.

"Seen him in Shipwreck Cove." John hissed to him, voice eager and quiet. "Alive. Whole. Unmolested." 

James' head spins. Is it relief he feels? He's not sure what he _should_ feel, for a man who is without a doubt his enemy. Who always has been. Who he'd tried to put to sword, cannon, or gibbet many a time. He should feel nothing for Sparrow's life or his death other than - at most - annoyance. He had felt nothing for months after learning of it. It had almost certainly been his fault. He had taken the heart. The Kraken had taken Sparrow. Cause, and effect. He had packaged it away with all of the other things he was guilty of.

His men at the Isle de Muerta.   
The hurricane.  
Andrew's death.  
The men, the women, the children, the honest people who had fallen on hard times and those who could no longer bear the lash on their back -   
Sparrow. Now Weatherby. More to come. 

He had put it somewhere dark and quiet and full of grief. Without Sparrow at the end of his spyglass, without the sea singing out for that push and pull between them, he had felt nothing. Letting Beckett maneuver him like a chess piece had been all too easy. Not even the ocean had seemed alive to him anymore. It was a dead thing under his feet. He'd moved in a haze until Elizabeth had woken him. Until she'd told him about her father - his friend - known the man for decades, taken dinner with him, shared the burden these last few months. Until she'd told him his friend was dead.

Until she'd shown him what side he'd chosen. 

Now he stands here in hell, or purgatory, or whatever this place was meant to be - the Locker. The last resting place of all sailors. The place Sparrow had been sent to because of him, while he stood here accusing John of doing the same to another man. The place he'd assumed, in some abstract way, that Sparrow would still be. 

\--The place, if John was to be believed, that Sparrow had somehow managed to escape from.

John smiled as he saw the understanding dawn in Norrington's eyes. It was a slow and predatory smile, self-satisfied. It reminded James of the sharks that appeared once there was blood in the water. 

"We're going to find my mate, we are. We're going to get _out_ of this fuckin' hellhole, accompanied by one of the most feared men t'ever pillage the Caribbean. An' we're gonna go clean up the fuckin' mess you made."

John broke their eye contact then, leaving James to feel like a puppet with cut strings. He tried to regain his bearings as John strode away, quick as you like, back on the trail for the woods. James stood frozen in the clearing for a heartbeat, and then two, wondering if the feeling in his belly was terror or excitement. 

He shook himself free of it and followed John's energetic steps. At least one of them seemed to have renewed energy. 

As they walked under the shadow of the trees again, John's voice rose, clear and smooth. James wondered if the violence hidden in it had always been there, or if he was just now starting to hear it. 

" _Fifteen men on a dead man's chest -_ "


	4. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we're finally getting somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one took forever, i apologize! i rewrote it about three times and spent half of those rewrites trying to tamp down norrington's thirst so

They were lost. Completely, undeniably, horribly lost. They'd been lost for roughly a day or more now, if Norrington's sense of time could be trusted, which he was starting to question. It was not as questionable as John's sense of direction. Fuck John's sense of direction, James thought decisively. Fuck it right to hell.

"Never did claim to be no navigator." John was protesting as they slogged through the brush. There were thorns in the brush. The thorns has been tearing insistently at both men's clothing for the better part of the day, and James was _done_.

He sang louder and more insistently about the sort of violence one should enact upon drunken sailors (with no sense of direction). He'd long sine run out of verses and begun inventing his own. Much of it was inspired by what he'd like to do to John at the moment. From the look on John's face at some of the more detailed verses, he'd noticed.

"I'm tryin' my best, y'know." He grumbled under James' singing. "Don't see you pickin' directions - fuck!"

His iron foot had gotten twisted in a clinging rope of weeds and jerked him around hard when he tried to take a step. James took a step forward, restraining himself from being too eager to offer help. He did feel bad for John having to wade through the weeds - the terrain had to be even worse for him. He was loathe to reach for his arm to help though, on the off chance it would get his hand bitten off. John righted himself and shook his leg a little, freeing it from the creepers growing under the leaves.

"Don't even know how we lost the damn path." He growled. "One minute there, the next minute gone. This place ain't right."

There, James would have to agree with him. His throat ached from constant singing, and both of their voices had grown hoarse. Being unable to stop had quickly made the amusement and novelty wear off. He'd give anything to stop singing, but the forest hadn't gotten any friendlier in the time that they'd spent lost. He was thirsty, and sore, and wondered again if staying dead on a beach would have been a better solution than this. _A chance at redemption,_ he reminded himself. _Real redemption. If you can get out._ It was the only thing that kept him walking with his strange companion.

John took over singing - though James was sure he was just reciting oaths, each more violent and filthy than the last, in a sing-song voice. He had no chance to think on it, because it was only moments before he heard the first sound in this place not made by one of them. It started low and quiet, but shook the ground at its end - a peal of thunder rolling through the wood.

 __"__ Oh, no." He rasped, and John stopped singing in shock.

"Was that - ?" John didn't even finish his thought before the next crack of thunder came, followed by a downpour of rain. It was a deluge that reminded James of every hurricane he'd ever weathered all at once. The rain was heavy and overwhelming, and wind whipped through the branches suddenly, chilling both men to their bones. Both of them were soaked through in a matter of minutes. John's hair whipped wildly around his face and a flash of lightning lit his eyes. He fished a flask from somewhere in his coat and took a swig, passing it over to James next. It was rum, of course, and it burned its way down James' throat. It did little to soothe his thirst but it did bring warmth to his belly.

There was no chance of them singing or even speaking now. Luckily, it seemed that the trees cowered from the storm as much as John and James did. They even paused for a moment under one tree, huddling together for a moment's respite under the branches. It was a freezing cold rain, reminding James of English winters. There was nothing else like that rain to freeze through your clothing, no matter how many layers. He missed the warm spring showers of Port Royal.

The water seemed to take particular delight in running down John's long, loose hair and scraggly beard. He shivered and dripped next to James. James was glad his own hair was still mostly trapped back in its orderly queue. A few strands had escaped, but he was spared the sensation of wet hair plastered to his face and neck. John, in contrast, looked like a drowned cat.

"Nice t'see some weather." John half-shouted into James' ear.

James let out a surprised laugh. "I'm not sure I would call it nice!"

He hadn't realized until now that John was, in fact, a few inches shorter than him. He had to lean down to shout into his ear.

"We have to keep going." He leant close to yell into John's ear. He knew it was obvious, but he couldn't motivate himself to brave the storm.

(again)

To brave another storm -

 _We're on land_. he growled inside his head. _And I'm already dead._

"I fuckin' know!" John yelled back, breaking James' train of thought. He gripped James by the elbow and dragged him back into the rain. James shuddered as he was soaked through anew. They picked a direction as northerly as he could figure, and started walking again.

The rain had soaked the ground under them, too. It was sodden and mucky now, mud bubbling up from underneath the loam. It was thick and sticky and sucked at the soles of James' boots. It clung to John's leg and the end of his crutch. Their speed halved as they struggled to make headway through it. Every now and then John would lurch as the mud refused to give up one of his limbs, and James kept careful pace with him throughout. If James stayed silent about it and didn't reach out first, on occasion John reached over and used his shoulder to steady himself.

It was with this stumbling, shuffling pace that they made their way through the storm. It, like the woods themselves, seemed unending. It wasn't long before both men were muddy to their knees. James wasn't sure he'd ever had a more unpleasant walk in all his life. The mud found its way inside their boots, soaking their socks and between their toes. It was gritty, and cold, and clammy. Norrington was sure that even when the rain ended they'd never get the mud out of their boots.

They walked until they found a place where the ground cut down to one side sharply. "It's from a flood before." John grumbled, but James jumped down anyway.

The ground had been washed away just enough for a ditch that was roughly James' height. Above him, the rest of the forest floor formed an outcrop of rock and roots that offered a little better shelter from the rain. He was standing in an inch of muddy water, but the wind and rain beat down less violently here.

"Get down here." He shouted up.

"Oh aye, sure, quick as y'please, sir." John cried sarcastically back. He struggled down the slope, using his crutch to balance, and James thought he'd make it fine until his leg slipped and John fell on his arse. He slid the rest of the way down, cursing, and swung at James with his crutch when he stepped closer to help him up. He managed on his own, slowly, and glared daggers at James as he hopped over to the meager shelter.

"Fuck you and yer hills." John grumbled to him as they leant on the muddy wall and waited hopelessly for the storm to break.

It was too cold for either man to even consider dozing off, despite their weariness. They cupped their hands at the edge of their overhang and drank muddy water to quench their thirst, and tempered the taste with John's rum.

James looked over at John. "Why do you keep going?" He cried out in the storm.

"What?" John looked sideways at him, his jaw tensing.

"I know why I'm following you," James squinted through the dripping rain. "I just don't - you didn't need to come here. Your friend. You keep going - "

"What is it exactly y'think I owe ya, Admiral?" John peered at him. "It sure as fuck best not be an explanation."

James shook his head. He hadn't meant to rile John up this time. "No - just - I admire it."

He fell silent after that, even though John kept staring at him. He couldn't say what gnawing thoughts clawed through his head in regards to John and the mysterious terror of the sea he risked his life for. He was sure he was meant to take it at face value. To assume it had something to do with rage, and greed. He wondered if there might be something more. Loyalty, perhaps.

Hours later, the rain still poured. Huddling together for warmth did nothing. They could both only shiver and lean. Their breath puffed in front of them in rolling clouds.

"We need heat." James groaned. "Or to keep moving."

"Not much for fire 'round here, is there?" John scowled at him. "And the water's risin'."

He was right. It lapped over the toes of James' boots now. James closed his eyes and took a deep breath, calming the fear in his gut. They were on land. The rain would end. They would dry out.

A different crack rang out nearer to them, and James' eyes flew open to see a massive branch crash down from the trees perhaps twenty paces away from them. In his eyes, it was the size of the Dauntless' mizzenmast.

"Admiral!" John shouted. "This storm ain't endin' with us just standing here!"

John was right. They needed to move. He had to make a decision.

He squinted up at the sky, trying to see the clouds through the hole in the branches made by the falling limb. Was it lighter one way than the other? Did the clouds thin over there, or was he imagining it? There was nothing for it but to keep on. He nodded to John and they forged back into the storm, faces turned into the wind as they struggled on.

Thankfully, continuing on seemed the right choice. They fought the storm for a few hours more before James realized that he hadn't heard thunder in some time. The rain lightened and it wasn't so hard to see, though the ground was still soft and slick and hard to navigate. The forest itself remained dark even as the downpour became a drizzle. They stumbled upon another small clearing, smaller than the one they'd found before. A huge old tree had once been in the center of it, but must have been split from its stump by some older storm. It lay on its side now, the remains of what stuck in the ground providing a convenient spot for them to sit for a moment. James wondered when they'd last sat. It must have been in that other clearing, the one full of golden warmth - was that a week a go now? More? He couldn't keep track of the days in this place.

The stump they sat on was massive - just large enough for the both of them to lay across it, though it was snug quarters. James wrestled his sodden coat off and hung it off of one of the felled tree's thick splinters. He was loathe to remove anything else, lest they need to move again and quickly.

"We should rest." He said to John, who was already sprawled out over the stump, wet coat be damned.

"I'm fine." John snapped anyway, reflexively.

"Well, I'm not." James snapped back and climbed back up onto the stump next to him, nudging him sharply with an elbow. He understood John's hostility - on many levels - but had no interest of pushing on further. They would pass even his threshold of weariness, and he was dead. "I'm tired. My feet hurt. I'm cold. I'm soaked. And you're no better off than I am. I'll admit we likely still can't light a fire, but I'm going to rest while I can."

John was quiet for a moment. "You're not seriously thinking of sleeping in this forest."

James glanced at him with amusement as he laid out on the rough wood. John always seemed most honest when forgetting his forged pirate voice. "Want's got little to do with it. I may be dead, but I am also dead tired. I need to rest. I daresay you might, too."

John grimaced. James noticed, not for the first time, that under all of the pretense John seemed incredibly tense.

"Look. The woods seem...less hostile after the rain. Maybe they were as thirsty as we were." James tries reasoning with him, though he'd hesitate to call talking about the forest as if it was alive reason.

"For blood, mayhap." John wrinkled his nose. "Fine. We'll rest. But I don't trust these bloody trees."

"We can take shifts." James sighed. "I'll take first watch, even."

John grimaced again, pulling his long curls over his shoulder and starting to wring them out over the edge of the stump. "No offense, but I don't trust ye, Admiral."

James looked over at him, taking stock of the lines framing John's tired but clear eyes. He saw the slump of John's shoulders, and wondered if the tension was what was holding the man together. "Well. Fine, I wouldn't mind a rest."

"Trust ol' John to look after ye, do ya?" John sounded dangerously amused, and a frisson of familiarity went up James' spine.

"What are you going to do, kill me?" He snorted and laid out, turning his back to John. "Wake me in a few hours."

John muttered something to his back, but Norrington was already half asleep.

 

 

When James woke, John had also hung his own coat up from a tree branch and had also stripped his shirt off. He was wringing it out, perched comfortably on a higher point of the splintered stump. James stared up at him for a moment, watching. John was a surprising mass of muscle despite the decade or more he had on James. He looked like a man still sailing before the mast, or more. He had a thick waist and broad shoulders, criss-crossed with fading scars. There was a badly tattoo'd sun on his shoulder, the lines wobbly and the sun's face crooked and leering. James made awkward eye contact with it and looked away again. It was times like this that made James feel this particular shame most sharply. The shame that just looking at a half-clothed stranger stirred something in him that most women never had.

It was no wonder now, though, that John had seemed to strong. His arms were corded muscle, flexing and bulging as he wrung his sodden shirt out. James wondered at how the man seemed to make himself seem so small. He hadn't much height, that was true, but he was no waifish thing. That impression must hinge upon those damnable eyes.

James pushed his guilty thoughts away as fast as he could, especially once he noticed that John was watching him back with humor.

"Awake, are we, Admiral?" The pirate's pronouncement of his title seemed very deliberate. James felt suitably chastised.

"Did I sleep long?" He asked, instead of addressing...anything.

"Not too long, far as I can tell." John shrugged, pulling his somewhat less damp shirt back on. James relaxed, relieved.

He felt - rested. He supposed that was a good sign. It had warmed up, and lightened - above them the sky was clear and the sun was back. His shirt still clung to him, drenched, and his toes squelched in his boots - but he wasn't frozen. He stood, untucking his own shirt and pulling it off to hang in the light breeze. It fluttered over them, a ragged and bloodstained banner. It was the first unobstructed view he had of his belly, and the place where the spike had been. He ran his fingers over the skin, and the large shiny-pink patch marring it just under his ribs. He couldn't decide if it ached or not.

"Hear that?" John asked him suddenly, shocking him out of his thoughts once more. James looked at him in confusion.

"Listen." John insisted. He pointed up.

James held still, listening hard, and still almost missed it. "...Birds."

There was the faintest cry of birdsong in the distance. He could also hear the low buzz of insects around them, crickets chirping in the long grass. Now that he was actually listening for it, it was almost deafening. Everywhere around them were the sounds of life.

"I wonder..." John hummed thoughtfully, levering himself up with his crutch. "Somethin' changed in this place, y'think?"

"I hardly know how it works." James hopped down from the sump and winced as his feet reminded him of how ill-used they had been. "Maybe we've finally walked far enough."

"Mayhap." John murmured, staring up into the trees.

"It's not as if it's going anywhere." James said carefully. "Everything will still be as it is now if you get some rest - "

"Will it?" John looked at him. "It all started just afore you woke, out of the blue."

That didn't make James feel particularly comfortable. Before he could think of any response, John had already tugged his coat back down and on, and was squaring up to the forest, ready to go. James wrung his shirt out and pulled it back on, followed by his somewhat drier coat. John waited long enough for him to get dressed and he was off again through the trees.

This time, James didn't have to wonder if John had the right way in mind. It was obvious. The further they waled, the louder the birds and insects became, until they were a cacophony of sound. Under their feet, a path started to appear. They didn't have to alter course or walk to it - slowly it revealed itself under them, from out of the grass. It was an earthen track that went from a deer path, to a walking trail, to a true road. It even had wheel ruts once again, springing from nowhere. The trees began to grow thinner, and sparser, and then eventually there were no trees at all. They were surrounded by scrub, and brush, and tall grass. An old, rickety fence formed out of nothing and ran alongside the road next to them.

John had begun to look nervous. If nervous was the right word. Unsettled might have been better. The further they walked down the winding road, the more unsettled he seemed.

"What is it now?" James asked, perhaps uncharitably annoyed. But he could still hear the insects buzzing, and far away a wren sang out for spring. Everything about them was...calming. Idyllic. He was reminded of casual days, long walks, and picnics, and a time when days had been easier.

"Nothin'." John growled through gritted teeth. "We're close."

James paused for a moment in his step before resuming. To him, this road was as nondescript as the forest had been. He didn't know where they were, or where the end of this walk was.

John glanced back as if he could sense Norrington's eyes on him. He sighed long and hard through his nose. "I know this road. I know where it ends. We're almost there."

His voice was quiet, and surprisingly shaken, and James couldn't bring himself to press. He didn't sound like a man about to meet an old friend. James flashed back to John's quiet rage in that clearing so long ago.

One of the most feared men t'ever pillage the Caribbean.

James was starting to worry what might lay at the end of the road ahead of them.

"You're certain this is the right course of action?" He hadn't asked in days. He had resigned himself to this pirate's plan - whatever it was - because he had nothing else. John had seemed confident in it, and now that confidence had all but vanished.

John nodded with trepidation to the fork in the road and the path to the right. "This way."

It wasn't an answer to James' question. They rounded the corner and James was surprised to see what they had walked so long and far to reach.

It was a small holding, the house set back from the road and protected by a mix of hedge and fencing like you only found in the Bahamas. There were a few tall trees out front, and a modest garden. Tomato vines curled up posts, already laden with slowly ripening green tomatoes. It was nothing grand. Just an unassuming, quiet little home.

John had frozen at the gate. James stopped behind him almost a second too late, looming up against his back. James looked over the rest of the house ahead of them, searching for what had spooked John. He saw almost instantly what it was, because his heart stopped for a beat as well.

There were three people on the wide porch at the front of the house. All of them looked comfortable, wreathed in golden light from the setting sun. One was a woman, with dark hair and a green dress, curled comfortably in a rocking chair. She was reading aloud to the other two, but James couldn't catch the words. Her companions were both men. One, a handsome blond in a blue silk coat, smiled and lounged over the other. He was was a redhead, and it was that copper hair that had made James' heart beat faster. But it wasn't Andrew - he was older, about John's age, and had a beard as ginger as the rest of him, though both hair and beard seemed threaded with silver and gold. Both men smiled softly at the woman as she read. They shared a rickety looking bench, and the blond's ankles were crossed delicately in the redhead's lap. James watched freckled hands run up and down a stockinged ankle, shockingly intimate. The trees were in the full bloom of spring, and blossoms drifted down from their branches across the tableau.

John still hadn't moved. The sun glinted off the men's hair, turning them into gold and fire. The blond laughed, his voice ringing clear across the garden.

"I can't." John whispered. James was sure it was more to himself than to James. "I can't take him."

James looked down at John. He still didn't know which of the men John had come for, but removing either of them from what looked like paradise -

From what looked like dear loved ones -

It seemed too cruel to bear. James' heart ached suddenly for his own death. Could he ever have had something like this, at the end of it all? Something like peace?

Before James could suggest that they leave - or offer any soft of awkward comfort to John (poor though it would inevitably be) - it was too late. They were spotted.

The woman and the blond man were smiling and waving to them as you might a neighbor you were fond of. The red-haired man stiffened and stared, which told him who they had come for before John could say anything.

"John! John, come say hello!" The woman called. She had a pleasant voice, cultured and playful. It only made John tense more. "Don't stand by the gate all day."

John took halting steps down the garden path, leaning heavily on his crutch. He moved as though he was fighting a physical pull and losing. James followed him with caution.

"Yes, bring your friend." She beckoned and laughed. As they got closer, the hair on James' arms started to rise. Something here was not right. Something about this place - lovely though it may be - was off.

John stopped short of the first step, frozen in place once more. James looked over at him, but John had eyes only for the red-haired man who stared back.

"The fuck are you doing here, you shit?" The man growled. His air was such a dramatic difference to the other two that it made James shiver.

John laughed though, tense and bright. James felt like he'd intruded on something beyond personal, and beyond private. Something painful.

"Came t'find you." John stared at the man, his blue eyes feverish. "Y've barely gone and age a day."

"You're talking like an idiot." The man snapped. "And I haven't aged because I'm dead. Idiot." He nudged his companion's legs out of his lap and stood, stepping down the stairs to John's level.

James found himself watching the other two. Their faces hadn't changed. They seemed entirely unconcerned for whatever might be passing here between John and their - friend? They smiled softly in both men's direction and said nothing.

"You got old." The stranger said after a long moment. They still hadn't looked away from each other.

"I missed you." John's voice was hoarse.

James almost wished for the garden to open up and swallow him into the earth.

"He missed you too." The blond man said out of nowhere. "Though he won't say it."

He was glared at by his friend for his trouble. James could only think that his voice had sounded odd - distant and flat, but pleasant.

"We'll catch up." John's friend growled, looking back at John and clearly sizing him up. "I can promise that. Now tell me who the fuck you've brought to my door, John Silver."

James' heart stops for a minute, but not as much as it does when Silver responds.

"Ah yes. This is Admiral James Norrington, of His Majesty's Royal Navy. East-India Trading dog."

The redhead bared his teeth at James. James took a careful step back. He wasn't prepared for the end of the introduction.

With relish, Silver smirked over at James. "Admiral, I'm pleased to introduce you to Captain James Flint."

 

\---------


	5. chapter six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lots of conversations happen. lots. of conversation.

John Silver was the last man James McGraw ever thought he'd see again. He'd buried John Silver inside his head like he'd buried Captain Flint, the two of them fated to die together. When Silver walked up his garden path bold as brass, he felt Flint rise from the dead with him. From the moment he'd seen Silver at his gate, he had fit back inside Flint like a well-worn jacket. It was terrible. His idyllic paradise, his lovers brought back to him, the skin of James McGraw - he could see it all slipping away in lieu of the joint madness of Flint and Silver. 

All that had run through his mind before Silver had even reached the bottom of the stairs. 

He cared less about what Naval prick Silver'd brought with him than he did why, or how, or _why_. There's got to be a why. Flint's not going to delude himself into thinking this is a bizarre social call.

"Why the fuck are you here?" he stares hard at Silver, committing every change to memory. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, grey in his hair and beard. He looked so much older. His eyes were still impossibly bright. Flint felt nauseous, excited, definitely angry - 

"It's a long story." Silver already looked guilty. Good. He should. He didn't know how long it had been, he didn't fucking care. Silver should always feel that guilt - 

"Where's Madi?" Flint asked sharply. 

"Safe." Silver says, his voice soothing. Flint hated that after all this time Silver could slip right back into _managing_ him like that. "She's at home. Twenty years of me dogging her steps and she's still only a little less angry than I assume you are now. So....things are good." 

Flint felt a wave of relief, followed by a surge of vindication. "Good. I'd think less of her if she forgave you." 

"No, you wouldn't." Silver said with a lopsided grin. 

He'd told the man so many times that he wasn't allowed inside his head. He'd _told_ him -- 

"James, are you going to introduce us?" Thomas' voice was soft behind him, kind, and it calmed his jangling nerves. Flint's eyes fluttered and he took a breath. 

"Miranda and Silver have met." Though they'd hardly interacted, pacing around each other like feral cats in a territory dispute. 

"So lovely to see you again." Miranda said, warm and welcoming. The peace here had made her content - why couldn't it do the same for him? 

He couldn't read the look on Silver's face. "Thomas Hamilton, may I introduce you to John Silver." He gives the words' propriety a vicious, mocking twist. He'd never thought he'd say the words in life; in death, they felt...wrong. 

"The one who brought James back to me." Thomas said reverently. Flint tried to revel in that guilt as it spread across Silver's face. 

"I - " Silver seemed to choke on his words, on the absurd piratical act he'd been putting on. "I've heard quite a bit about you." 

"And I you." Thomas was a treacherous shit. Silver's look of guilt and confusion only seemed to increase. Flint saw no reason to set him at ease. 

As one, he, Miranda, and Thomas turned to look at Silver's quiet companion. The latest in Silver's ill-planned allies, Flint thought with no small measure of amusement. At least this one wasn't another redhead. 

_But he has such green eyes --_ a voice like Thomas' whispered in his mind. Flint shuddered. 

"The fuck are you _both_ doing here?" He snarled, not feeling particularly like making some English Navy bastard feel welcomed. 

"Why don't we...sit inside and talk?" Silver asked, sounding weary and yet honey-sweet. 

Because I don't want to, Flint didn't say. He didn't want Silver back in his life - his death - whatever this was. He didn't want Silver in his head or at his hearth. Never again. 

"That sounds like an excellent idea." Miranda said before he could stop her. "Admiral, Mr. Silver, please - come inside." 

The heavy tread of mud-filled sea-worn boots came up his steps, crossed his threshold, left muck on his doormat. They were inside his home. Inside this peace and quiet he had finally won, free of the sea, free of pirates, free of _Long John Silver_. He took a steadying breath. For a moment, the world had been red with an old familiar rage, as known to him as breathing. He had wanted to strike, to flare, to burn like he once knew he could. 

What stopped him wasn't knowing better. It wasn't some kind of peace he had cultivated in his heart, choking out weedy hate. It wasn't the soothing presence of Thomas beside him, or Miranda's watchful eyes. It was the sheer fucking cognitive dissonance of Long John Silver hopping out of his muddy boot in James' front parlor. The room was clean, whitewashed, and cozy. Strings of dried herbs and flowers hung by the window. Miranda must have put tea on earlier, because the house smelled faintly of bergamot and oranges. There, in the middle of his home, domesticity oozing around him, Silver looked as dirty and wild as Flint remembered. 

It was strange. He was a little older, yes, but otherwise so familiar to Flint that it made his chest ache. He couldn't look at him too long, or the pain spread through him down to the very tips of his fingers. He hated it. He hated that the sight of Silver still made him feel this way. It was as if the betrayal was new all over again. 

Silver just fucking stood there, looking contrite and guileless next to a bedraggled and sorry-looking fucking _Navyman_. 

"Start talking." Flint growled to them. "Or I'll give you a real reason to be in the Locker." 

"James." Thomas said reproachfully. 

"Oh, he's already dead." Silver said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Norrington. "I hitched a ride."

Norrington made a noise in his throat that sounded suspiciously like exasperation, and Flint glanced over at him. He looked him over, taking stock. You could have told the man was military a few hundred paces off. His clothing was as thick with muck as Silver's. The coat he wore had possibly been that memorable blue once, though now it was largely brown. The awful mustard-yellow trim that Flint didn't remember having still stood out from the mud. Most arresting was the remains of his shirt. It was stained rust-red over the breadth of it, gaping raggedly open at the middle where the red was deepest. His queue was beginning to some undone and his unshaven face gave him a haggard air. Taken all together, the man was a grim spectacle. The picture was ruined a little by the look on his face - a mixture of confusion, discomfort, and embarrassment. Common emotions around Silver. 

"I apologize for the intrusion." he said awkwardly. He looked more like a man who'd interrupted his neighbors at an unfortunate time than a greedy prick. It was almost funny, which Flint appreciated as a change of pace from how he felt about the other man in the room. Probably just a stuffy prick instead. 

"Well, at least one of you does." Flint snorted, fixing his eyes back on Silver's face. Silver wouldn't meet his eyes. He looked at everything else, instead - which worried Flint. Silver looked around the sitting room, looked at the worn and comfortable chairs by the fire, the books, he looked at James' forgotten and dusty gardening boots and Miranda's half-abandoned sewing. He looked at their little kitchen and the dining table set for three. He looked at Thomas and Miranda with something bordering on awe, and Flint bristled. 

"What is it about men and refusing to sit?" Miranda asked brightly from behind him. "There's a perfectly good table." 

"An excellent point." Thomas said, just as cheery. They seemed determined to ignore the awkwardness between Silver and Flint, and seemed just as unbothered by two strangers in their sanctuary. Thomas pulled a chair out and looked pointedly at James until he sat. Silver took the seat across from him with a poorly stifled hiss of pain as he took the weight off of his leg. Flint hardly paid attention to Norrington being ushered into a seat as well, so great was his fixation on Silver. He had a strong instinct to shake the man for not taking care of himself - but that wasn't who they were anymore. 

Tea appeared, courtesy of Thomas' steady hands. He expected both Thomas and Miranda to circle them for gossip like sharks circling blood in the water, but they exchanged looks and disappeared to the parlor. Flint was grateful. He didn't know how to be their husband and Silver's - enemy? Captain? Friend? - at the same time. It made something like fear curl up in his belly. 

Norrington seemed more interested in the tea than anything else. He wrapped long, elegant fingers around the cup like it was his lifeline. Silver fidgeted, not drinking, touching everything else on the table but his cup. They were a spectacle of contrasts. Flint couldn't bring himself any more than Silver could. In his case, it was because he was afraid he'd throw the cup at Silver's head. He didn't need to stir Miranda's wrath by being both a poor host and breaking her china - even if this place would just provide more. 

"So? Tell me why you're here." Flint asked bluntly, crossing his arms. He leant back in his chair and eyed Silver. If the man had looked any more shifty and guilt-ridden, he'd insist Silver was putting it on. He might be anyway. Norrington looked guilty and dead, which didn't help. 

"Well." Silver hesitated. "It's a long story." He kept fucking hesitating. That was never a good sign. 

"Are you ever planning on enlightening me? Because I've been doing pretty fucking good without your interference, and if you don't have a good reason..." He trailed off, teeth bared. 

Silver looked away again and Flint watches his throat bob as he swallowed roughly. He took a gulp of tea and winced. Flint could feel the long-dormant vein in his temple start to pulse with anger. Only Silver could ever get him this angry this quickly. 

"I never meant for this to happen." Silver's voice was choked with remorse. _It's fake,_ Flint reminded himself. _It's not real. Silver doesn't give a fuck._ "Please believe me. I thought I had found a solution that would work to the best of us all. I could not anticipate - I thought your exile would be only temporary - " 

"You sold me into indentured servitude for a lifetime." Flint's jaw worked, and he hated that he almost felt amused. "Temporarily." 

"It's you." Silver said as if his meaning was obvious. "I gave it three weeks before the two of you started an insurrection, by my reckoning." 

Flint's mouth twitched and he forced down a grin. "But instead..." 

"Instead, the two of you died." Silver said, his voice and face strangely hollow. It was a good act. Flint almost sympathized. 

"Well, yes, eventually." He said casually. "Long after the plantation." 

"...what?" Silver stared at him. A quick glance over showed that Norrington had started to pay attention at last. Silver must have been telling stories again. "No - I came, I came looking - You took so long - and I saw the graves. They had burned every - " He swallowed again, staring hard into Flint's eyes now and Flint found it a little less humerous. 

"That was - well. I forgot about that part, honestly." He was the one to look away now. "All that was in the graves were guards, probably. No one else perished there. We did, ah, leave. With...some assistance. The sickness was a fabrication, to give everyone a little time." 

"You fucker." Silver slumped in his chair like a puppet with its strings cut. "I can't fucking believe you. I thought I'd signed your damned death warrant - " Silver shook his head and looked at Flint with an expression Flint hadn't seen on him in a while. It was perilously close to awe, and his eyes were misty, and he'd forgotten Silver could look like that, too. 

"You were telling the truth." Norrington muttered, looking surprised by it and surprised he'd said it. 

Flint snorted, hoping the navyman didn't get used to it. "In this one thing, you can absolve your conscience. The rest of it still stands."

Silver closed his mouth and furrowed his brow. "I stand by the choices I made. With what I knew at the time, it was the only solution I saw to ensure your survival. Madi's survival." 

" _Your_ survival. Do not pretend you had motives any nobler than that." Flint snarled. 

 

Norrington looked between them, lost in the years of context. He looked brooding as he tried to piece together the puzzle of the legends he'd heard about and the two men before him. 

"We've had this discussion." Silver said bitterly. "Your war would have been the end of both of you. I could not bear that. I can better accept the both of you _hating_ me for all your lives than either of you dead." His voice cracked slightly. 

"And how did that work out?" Flint asked viciously, gesturing to the house they sat in. Silver's jaw worked angrily and Flint tried not to get excited about their impending fight. No one _fought_ him here. 

"How did you end up here?" Norrington asked suddenly. "If you'll pardon my intrusion." 

Flint stared at him. "...are you asking me how I died?"

"Well, if not the plague, what happened?" Norrington looked at Flint, his face curious and sharp. 

Flint opened his mouth for a furious retort, but - found none. He couldn't remember. He remembered leaving the plantation - both of them - running, months of hiding, but death he could not remember. "It's not important." 

"It's not?" Silver frowned. 

Norrington looked skeptical, too, and fuck him for coming into Flint's house and assuming he could have an opinion on anything. 

"No, it's not. It's none of your fucking business. Took you long enough to come looking for me. What's the plan, Silver? You drag me out of paradise and back into that hell? For what?" Flint raged, distancing himself from the memories that weren't there. 

Silver hesitated, and Flint watched him look at Norrington first. Norrington seemed disinclined to assist him, and thus couldn't be _that_ stupid. Silver looked annoyed. Flint wasn't entirely surprised that they were communicating without words - Silver wormed into men's heads so easily - but he was interested by the lack of give to Norrington. Very unlike Hands, who had seemed at times to be Silver's grouchy dog. 

"Things have...changed, these past few years." Silver started, finally. "In the Bahamas as a whole." 

"I'm so surprised." Flint said dryly. "You let civilization back in and it has made itself at home, has it? Men like _this_ \- " he jerks his head in Norrington's direction. "Have they driven you out of house and home? Have they started to slaughter everything you once loved? Again? And what, you've finally found your balls and decided to _give a shit_? I told you this would happen. If you do not fight, they just walk in." Flint sniffed at the dirt on his floor, tracked in by the two visitors. "Fuck you for caring _now_."

Norrington seemed surprised by Flint's venom, but Silver just looked resigned. "It's actually worse than you imagine. It's..bad. And _strange_." 

"Bad and strange." Flint repeated. "That's descriptive." 

"There's a man in Port Royal who has blackmailed the Governor, controls the port, controls the Navy, and controls the law." Norrington had an arresting - and guilty - low drawl. "Lord Beckett's gone, for lack of a better word, mad. He's destroyed what rights the town had, and he's expanding through the area like a disease. Anyone suspected of aiding in piracy, or associating with men who commit acts of piracy, is put to death. Not buccaneers. Not sailors. Not madames and shady businessmen - children. Barmaids. Washerwomen. Beggars." 

Flint felt the old rage bubbling up in him again. It crawls up his spine and wraps around his lungs. "And what've you done about it, _Admiral_? Are these souls not in _your_ care?" 

Norrington's face was long and grim. "They are. I've done nothing. I've let myself be made into a bogeyman for all those sailing our waters, regardless of the strength of their connection to the account. I drowned them, shot them, I dragged them back to be hung in the streets." 

"And you fucking brought him here?" He growled at Silver. 

"Tell him the rest." Silver looked at Norrington pointedly. Norrington grimaced. 

"This is where I imagine anyone could help would cease to listen." Norrington took a deep breath. "Beckett holds the heart of Davy Jones." 

Flint stared at them both for a moment, wondering if he had finally gone mad. "What." 

"The Captain of the Flying Dutchman." Norrington cleared his throat. "I don't suppose you've heard the stories?"

"Of course I've fucking - Ghost ship, some bullshit about it claiming lost crews, old wives' tale because men don't know what fucking _fata morgana_ is. Especially when they've had too much rum."

"It's real." Norrington interrupted. "Captained by Davy Jones himself, crewed with those lost souls he's shanghai'd into lifetimes of service aboard its great rotting hulk. I've been on it. I've broken bread with Jones. Not a comfortable experience." 

"The story is," Silver leant closer over the table, his eyes alight with the joy of a good story, and Flint hates how much he knows that look. "He fell in love with a woman - " 

"Or the sea." Norrington interjected. 

"Both. Either. Shut up. He fell in love, and he devoted himself, and his love proved unfaithful. He was in so much pain from the betrayal and his broken heart, he cut the heart out of his chest and sealed it away so he'd never feel again." 

Sounded reasonable to Flint. "That's not actually physically possible." He grumbled. 

"It is. I've held it." Norrington still looked grim and serious. "I've had it inside my jacket, beating next to my own heart. It's real." 

Flint was starting to wonder if this man was quite sane. 

"More important, whoever has the heart has the leverage to control Jones, the very shepherd of death upon the sea. All seas." Silver's eyes still had that scheming, joyous light in them. "Not the best thing to have in a greedy trading merchant's hot little hands." 

Norrington shifted guiltily and Flint's attention snapped back to him. "How did it get there, I wonder." He muttered. 

Norrington looked up and locked eyes for a surprisingly long time. Flint wasn't going to give that easy, though, no matter how hangdog or defiant a man looked. 

"Regardless of how it got where, we need to get it back." Silver seemed to have already made the decision. He leant back in his chair and Flint leant forward in return, his eyes glinting in the light of sunset. 

"And then what?" Flint asked him. "You keep it?" 

Silver sighed. "We've long been over how little I care for the sea. I don't know _what_ to do with it once we've got it." 

Norrington's sidelong look at Silver said he thought that Silver was mad and a little disappointing. The boy needed to learn to control his disdain better. 

"I've heard your speeches on how you don't love the sea." Flint waved that away - he didn't believe it, not anymore. Silver cared to much about everything, including the ocean beneath them. "But I think you're a little fonder of power." 

Silver snorted. "I want to go home to a wife that will speak to me. I want to urn my inn without harassment from bought soldiers. I want the name Long John Silver to fade from memory and to be left the fuck _alone_."

Flint stared at him, the line of sunlight slipping down his face as twilight grew, leaving his eyes in shadow. "You're really going to walk away?" 

"I had walked away!" Silver snapped. "I had my nice quiet life, and if she didn't love me the same, then at least she was there to be fucking disappointed in me! But men have been coming, Flint. Men in uniforms asking about old sailors in town, asking about history and Maroons and we made me a fucking household name! They _will_ come for me, and they will come for her, and I cannot abide that." 

"Not so noble after all." Flint said quietly, fidgeting with the full cup of cold tea before him. "Fine. What use do you have for me? I'm a dead man. Why not let me be dead?" 

"He wants to wipe out all pirates, all men and women who might in any way consider themselves free. You don't _want_ to fight?" Silver looked eager again. 

"I found peace." Flint gestured around. "Happiness, here, with Thomas and Miranda. Without England. Without shame. My days are spent gardening and reading, and my nights are always spent with them. In death, I have everything I wanted. We have everything. Why would I go?" 

Silver's mouth opened, but he couldn't seem to find words. A miracle, Flint thought. After a moment, Silver looked away from him. 

"I suppose it's a question of duty." Norrington said mildly. "I shirked mine. I'd like to make it right. I don't know what your duty would be." He looked around the room, shifting awkwardly. He seemed to finally have reached his limits on the conversation, seeing the way Flint still stared at Silver for an answer. 

"You, ah - have a lovely garden. If you don't mind, I'd like a little air." He stood stiffly and walked out without his boots. 

Flint huffed in amusement at his awkward, straight-backed retreat. "Where'd you find that one?" 

"Bleeding out on the deck of the Dutchman." Silver sighed. He leant in again, less tense without a stranger at the table. "James. I...don't want to take this from you. Please know that. You deserve peace." 

Flint shifted at the use of his given name. He didn't know what to make of what Silver said now. Was he being genuine? Once upon a time, he would have believed him. Would have been grateful. Now, his mind only screamed to watch for the next betrayal. 

"But?" He asked, probing.

"No buts." Silver shook his head. "I'm sorry I came. Sorry I...interrupted this." 

Flint didn't know what to say to that. "How was coming here even possible? You're not dead. How did you find me in - wherever this is. The 'Locker'. How can you be sure you'll get out again?"

"Well as far as the last goes, I'm not actually sure I can." Silver smiled. "I've got a few theories, some old wives tales, and a couple of rumors." 

Flint stared. He wasn't sure he'd ever known Silver not to have an exit strategy. 

"As for how I found you, my answer is much the same. I would like you to know that I didn't take nearly twenty years to decide I'd rather you were alive. Finding out how to find you - finding out I could - that was not an easy task. Believing there was a chance I could was not easy. I had no idea what I'd find, if I could make it here, if it was real." Silver looked around the homey kitchen. "This...was not something I expected. The two of them were not - " he trailed off, lost. "I did not plan for this." 

Flint was quiet for a long time. He listened to the birds outside, to Thomas and Miranda moving about in the next room. The life he'd wanted for so long, he had now after death. A place where he'd thought he could never be troubled again. And yet, here was Silver; Here was an old cause to stir the blood; Here was the sea calling him back. He thought he had gone far enough. He had walked, and walked, through desert and forest and swamp and moor until he had come to this place, so far from the call of the sea. Miranda and Thomas had been waiting for him, had held him again finally. How had it not been far enough? They had been waiting here for him, at the end of it all. 

"I'll take Norrington and go in the morning." Silver said, when Flint had been silent too long. "If we could just get some rest, some sleep - " 

"Of course." Flint sighed. "Just leave tomorrow." He wished he felt as confident as he sounded. 

"Agreed." Silver said, his face unreadable. 

\----

Norrington had originally excused himself from the room not for air, but to escape the building tension between the two ex-shipmates. That air had been thick enough to wade through. He hadn't thought his hasty exit through, because now he was trapped outside without his boots and nothing around but the tomatos. And flies. He sat on the front step and stared out, trying to reorder his thoughts. Captain Flint. Long John Silver. Childhood villains sitting about the dinner table, having tea and arguing over who wronged whom. It all seemed so...personal and petty. Was that what he expected from the men who terrorized Nassau? That the end of their tyranny was in fact due to the falling out of friends? 

Knowing now what he knew about everything he'd done, about what Beckett had done - did he still believe any of the stories of Nassau? That made his stomach churn in an unexpected way. God, what he would give to understand his place in the world as well as he once thought he did. Who to trust, how to act, what to believe - it had been shaken by his conversation with Elizabeth on the Dutchman's deck. His journey with Silver threw him even further into disarray. His world, once so neatly organized in black and white, had exploded into a riot of confusing color. He wasn't sure he liked it just yet. If his men could see him now - Well. He'd imagine Theo would feel vindicated, if he ever stopped being angry. Not that he deserved Theodore's forgiveness, ever. 

"Penny for your thoughts?" 

James jumped. He would have been more embarrassed, but he had heard no one approach. It wasn't often that men crept up on him. Thomas Hamilton hadn't seemed like the kind of man who would do it easily, but there he was at James' shoulder. He was unsettlingly close. 

"Ah - sorry, I'm not sure I'd know where to begin." He hedged around the question with politeness. 

Hamilton smiled, and nodded, and seemed to look through James. "Guilt will eat you, if you let it." He sounded far to genial for James' comfort. 

"I'll...keep that in mind." He responded. 

"Do that." Hamilton nodded. "You should both stay." There was a pause, and then Hamilton smiled, still looking through him. "The night. It gets odd outside at night." 

As much as the other man was starting to unsettle him, James would bet he was right. And Hamilton _did_ unsettle him. He could feel the goosebumps raising on his arms. "Thank you. We could certainly use the rest - it was a long walk here." 

"It always is." Hamilton chuckled, stepping back into the house. 

James stared after him, and then out into the garden. The sun was sinking fast and the sky glowed a rusty, deep red. If he had thought Thomas Hamilton briefly unsettling, it was nothing to that blood red sky. Eyes started to wink into view along the far hedge. James rose and beat a hasty retreat into the relative safety of the small, cozy home. There was a sound disturbingly like and unlike laughter ringing out from the distant forest. 

Inside, Mrs. Hamilton had begun to light the lamps. A cheery fire crackled in the hearth, stew pot hanging above it. A heavenly aroma filled the house. Flint had left the dinner table and folded himself into a chair by the fire, his feet tucked under himself and his nose in a book. He looked oddly normal, and vulnerable. Of all the things on this unbelievable journey, it was strange that the fearsome Captain Flint scared James least of all. Thomas Hamilton sat in an armchair opposite him, also reading. Flint glanced up now and then to look at him, as if he was reassuring himself the other man was still there. 

Silver still sat at the dinner table, twisted into an odd angle so that he could still watch Flint. He seemed wary of stepping into the sitting room itself. The Hamiltons had plenty of room - beyond the three chairs was a sofa, as if they may at some point entertain guests. What guests they expected here, James couldn't say. 

"We'll be staying the night." Silver said quietly, not looking up at him. 

"Yes, Mr. Hamilton suggested as much." 

"Lord Hamilton." Silver said casually, ignoring Norrington's surprise. "Lord and Lady Hamilton are hospitable hosts. But Flint's also said we can stay, so we won't be drug into the road in the middle of the night." 

"Lord Hamilton insinuated we wouldn't want to travel here at night." Norrington glanced out the window at the growing darkness. 

"Good for us we're staying." Silver looked at the window as well. "We must have passed through the night at some point in that forest. What's different now?" 

"Nothing else was living out in the forest." Norrington said grimly. 

They turned from the cold, dark window and looked back into the sitting room. They watched as the Lady Hamilton kissed first her husband, and then Flint, before she started toward them. Silver seemed unphased, but James had a little more trouble concealing his surprise. Silver glanced over at him and chuckled, offering no explanation. Lady Hamilton started to walk their way, her dark eyes sparkling with mirth. Norrington felt his face heat and he stepped back out of her way, but she was only coming to gather bowls from the cabinets. 

"You may notice we're frightfully informal here." She smiled. "Feel free to join us. For dinner. In the parlor. Or eat here, if you must." She set an empty bowl next to each of them, and carried the rest back to the sitting room. Silver seemed more baffled by the bowl than anything else they'd seen in this house. Norrington looked out to the sitting room, watching Lord Hamilton serve food as Flint failed to ever look up from his book. 

"Come eat." Lord Hamilton called, his eyes unerringly finding Norrington's in the gloom. Silver got up, slow and stiff, and James followed him out. He wondered for a brief moment if they _should_ eat the food in this place - whether it was the underworld or fae-cursed, there were so many ways for it to go wrong. His stomach growled audibly, though, and it smelled like heaven. 

He felt ridiculous trailing after Silver - he didn't even like the man - but he wasn't about to be alone with the other three. When Silver returned to the table with his dinner, so did James. He could feel the Hamilton's eyes on them while they ate, and he wondered if Silver could, too.

They had a guest room - just one - all three of them, the Hamiltons and Flint, retired to one room together. James thought he might faint, honestly - and then he realized that meant he'd have to bunk with Silver or sleep on the sofa. It faced giant blank windows that stared out at the grassy hills. Glowing eyes stared back. 

James was quick to pick a side of the bed and shed his coat, lying down with a groan. "Why is it the pain only comes when you _stop_ moving?" 

"Couldn't say." Silver said stiffly, still standing beside the bed. Norrington glanced at him, surprised when he caught a glimpse of Silver's pain written plain across his face. Of course he was in pain - why was he still upright? Norrington turned his back quickly, in case his observation was the answer. He wasn't sure why he cared. He focused back on getting comfortable and ignoring his own stink, stripping down to his bloody shirt and his underthings. By the time he finished, there was a telltale dip to the bed and a thud, followed by Silver's hiss. James didn't know what Silver's leg must feel like after their long trek, but he didn't envy it. 

It didn't take long for James to fall asleep, the exhaustion of the journey consuming him before Silver had blown out the lamp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> add flint, increase swearing by 1000%


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit gets real, alt: we are still in the gdmn locker, i'm sorry, have a sex scene

James dreamt of skeleton pirates. He dreamt of battles without end, and enemies that would not fall. The stench of rotten breath as he ran a man through, only for him to stumble into moonlight and send James’ blade rattling through his ribcage. He could still see their eyes, precariously set in tattered skulls, cloudy with death. They stared right through him and grinned, grinned, grinned.

 

He awoke soaked in sweat and with his chest aching where he’d been speared through. He sat up with a start and looked around in confusion, taking a moment to remember where he was. Not the blood and ichor-soaked decks of the  _ Dauntless _ , but a borrowed bed in...hell? Purgatory? Or was it indeed something else entirely?

 

Silver turned over with a grunt and a deep somewhat fake snore. A cue to stop flailing about and let the other man sleep, James suspected. He swung his feet out of bed and pulled his coat and muddy trousers back on, padding barefoot into the hall, and then the kitchen. Through the little window there he could see the sky just beginning to tinge pink. Dawn, he hoped, would bring safety.

 

He stepped out onto the porch and took a deep breath. Even the cleanest country air never tasted right; he missed the bite of salt and stink of fish and tar on the breeze. 

 

“You’re up early.” Lady Hamilton’s soft, unexpected voice behind him made him jump just as high as her husband’s had the day before. How were these two so damnably quiet?

 

He looked back at her hesitantly. She always had a warm, amused smile tugging at her lips, and her eyes crinkled humorously at the corners. It was a handsome smile, and she was a handsome woman. He should have been relatively at ease in her company, inappropriate though it might be. He imagined no one in this house was one for propriety. 

 

It was something in her eyes, though. Something cloudy and glazed. She stared through him just as her husband had.

 

“I’m used to sailors sleeping as much as possible at journey’s end,” she said, leaning on the railing beside him and smiling wider. 

 

“I’m afraid our journey’s only just begun,” he said, standing awkward and stiff.

 

“Nonsense. You have the look of a man who sorely needs the rest he is due.” She tilted her head and looked him up and down casually, and he was suddenly aware at his poor state of dress. 

 

“It has been eventful,” he admitted, “and I have known better circumstances. But I have not yet finished.” 

 

Something flashed in her eyes, sharp and ugly, but she only continued to smile. “As you say, admiral. Remind me later, and I will see if Thomas has clothing you might borrow. You’re a sight in those.”

 

Taken aback by her offer, he could only stammer “That - that would be most appreciated. I...apologize for the state of me. I don’t want to impose, though - “

 

“Nonsense.” She straightened up, cheerful once more. “We don’t have visitors often. We’re both quite pleased to have more. Impose as long as you like.” 

 

“Thank you.” James was still awkward and tense. There was nothing truly wrong with the offer - it was in fact very kind. But something about the Lady Hamilton still felt... _ off. _ “Though I’m sure Jo-  _ Silver _ will be eager to keep moving.”

 

She frowned, a cruel and small gesture quickly smoothed out. “Silver might do as he pleases. It’s not time for him, yet. You  _ belong.” _

 

“Pardon?” He took a startled half-step back from her. She had shifted closer and closer during their conversation, the edge of her skirt brushing his bare toes. 

 

“He’s alive. You’re dead, James. Stay with the dead.” She was looking  _ at _ him now, her dark, hazy eyes strangely alight. Her face, he was certain, had not changed at all - but for a moment she looked utterly unlike herself. 

 

He took a hasty step back, bumping into the rail. “I - I am afraid I have duties still to finish among the living.” 

 

She laughed, short and scornful. “The living! Your duty to them is over, Admiral. Everything is over. There is only the peace at the end left.” 

 

“I’ll...take that under advisement,” he capitulated quickly, hoping she’d back away if appeased. He couldn’t say why his friendly hostess now seemed to frightening, only that she was. He’d faced things that would make other men weep at night - made him weep at night - but right now this woman made his skin crawl.  _ Run, _ his hindbrain seemed to scream.  _ Before it eats you. _

 

She only smiled gravely and nodded, though, before continuing down the steps into the garden. He took a few more deep, shaky breaths before resolving to go and wake Silver. Something in this place wasn’t right.

  
  
  
  


James McGraw had begun to get used to waking up next to Thomas again. Thomas and Miranda, even, when she could be swayed to sleep in. It was a feeling and a place he’d never thought he’d have again; warm and secure, nestled against Thomas’ chest, the space beside him where she slept just beginning to cool. Thomas was stroking his fingers idly through James’ hair, and he remembered fondly how insistent the other man had been about him growing it back out when they’d met in Savannah. He sighed, pressing his face into Thomas’ hands. 

 

“You’re awake,” Thomas said, pleased. He gripped James’ chin lightly and turned his head, kissing him sweetly. James melted into his arms, turning to Thomas like a flower to the sun. Thomas’ broad hands framed his face, holding him as Thomas’ kisses turned hungry. He kissed James like he might still disappear at any moment, like he must consume and keep him immediately or he’d be lost again. 

 

James skimmed his fingers up Thomas’ sides, marveling at the smooth skin of his ribs and his broad back. Thomas’ scars had all been wiped clean here. Not a line marred the golden expanse of his skin. James, in contrast, was as scarred and mottled as he’d been on the day he died. He didn’t know why. Perhaps he didn’t deserve to be clean. Thomas glowed in the dawn’s light, bright and holy, and it made James unconcerned for the state of his skin and his soul.

 

“I love you.” he sighed sleepily into the crook of Thomas’ neck. Thomas laughed, bright and open, and covered James with the weight of his own body. James would give anything to always wake up this way, to always feel that weight atop him. 

 

Christ, when Thomas kissed him, it was like coming home over and over again. His mouth was soft, and he seemed to draw out the darkness and hate inside of James with every sweep of his clever tongue just as a doctor drew infected blood from a wound. It left him lethargic and peaceful in Thomas’ arms, bending however Thomas was pleased to put him. He arched into Thomas and opened to him without resistance, half asleep and half mad with joy. The only thing he would have liked more was Miranda there with him, Miranda with his head cradled by her soft, pale thighs. 

 

He murmured praise and adoration to Thomas as they rocked together. He worshiped him as he was filled, and overcome, and claimed. Thomas’ teeth were a brand on his shoulder, burning hot, and he knew they’d leave a livid mark. 

 

“Mine. My James.” Thomas crooned in his ear, and James groaned in agreement. He was theirs again, completely theirs, and nothing would take him from them this time. 

 

“Yours,” he murmured as Thomas growled, as he was bent in half, his thighs burning as Thomas pinned his knees to his chest. He lost his words after that, crying out softly at first - and then with growing wild abandon. What did it matter who heard? Fuck Silver. Fuck his navy man. This was where he belonged, how he belonged. He shuddered and cried out under Thomas’ impossible strength, and it wasn’t long before he was filled with an equally unbelievable heat.

No, he never wanted to leave this. Long John Silver wasn’t about to stand in his way.  

 

He dropped back into a doze in the safety of Thomas’ arms, exhausted. He didn’t remember being this exhausted after every romp when he was younger, but he supposed with amusement that that was what age did to a man, and death was no escape. Thomas returned to stroking his hair as he drifted back to sleep. 

 

He only had about another hour of rest before he had to rise, no matter what he’d rather do. There was the garden to tend to, for one. Their ‘guests’  to oust, for another. He had to be quick and insistent, or Miranda might have angled for them to linger. He honestly didn’t understand why she might - she and Silver had not been more than civil in life for the brief time they’d met. Still, he’d gotten the creeping suspicion that she was eager for the two men to draw out their stay. She’d hinted at letting them recuperate here the other night when they’d retired - sympathy for their hard journey, he was sure, but he had no interest in letting Silver worm into his head again. No, Silver had to leave as soon as possible. 

 

He was not reassured when he went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Breakfast in the house was always his territory; there was something about standing at the counter and slicing fruit, warming tea, that soothed him. Now, he had to do it while steadfastly not acknowledging Silver sat at the table behind him, watching him. 

 

He didn’t ask if Silver had heard them earlier. He didn’t care to know. At least, if he continued to tell himself he did not care he may sincerely have begun to do so. He didn’t care what Silver might have heard, or what he might think about it. He didn’t care if Silver thought of it at all. He’d be gone soon, and that was all the better. 

 

“James, darling,” there was Miranda. He hadn’t heard her come into the kitchen, but he could tell by her tone that she was up to something. “Don’t you think we ought to offer our guests breakfast as well? And - perhaps a wash?” 

 

He didn’t want to offer them shit, actually, but he didn’t say that. He’d have to haul water back from the well if they wanted a bloody wash. Though, to be honest, he could actually smell Silver from across the room. “Fine.” 

 

“That’s really not necessary - “ Silver started to say, his voice smooth and suitably chagrined. 

 

“Shut up.” Flint growled at him.  He’d cut more fruit, slice some bread. Add water to the porridge. It would be fine. 

 

They’d better be fine sharing the damned bath water. 

  
  
  


Silver was already up and about when Norrington had returned to their room. He came back to find him seated in the kitchen, staring at Flint’s back as the man chopped aggressively at a spiny pineapple. He hesitated before stepping into the kitchen, in part because the air between the two men seemed thick with resentment. The other part was the fact that the Lord and Lady Hamilton seemed to hover at the edge of every room. 

 

“Admiral, just in time for food.” Lord Hamilton said, with a perfectly polite smile. 

 

They all broke fast together in an awkward tension - the Hamiltons in a cheery mood, making small talk over mangos and coaxing both Silver and Norrington into staying for breakfast and then a wash, and a change of clothes. Norrington bit into the sweet pineapple and had a thought suddenly of fairy cakes and pomegranate seeds, and swallowing proved difficult. Silver and Flint seemed only to trade staring at each other with ignoring each other pointedly. 

 

Their tension - and Silver’s obvious difficulty in assisting with carrying - led to Norrington volunteering to assist Captain James Flint with fetching his bath water. 

 

“I really don’t mean to impose - I can certainly get it -” He felt like he was in an impossible fever dream. 

 

A bucket thumped against Norrington’s chest. “You can help.” 

 

Flint seemed to growl everything he said. Norrington wondered if he was actually always angry, or if it was just his natural register and everyone had decided to assume he was foul-tempered? Certainly he’d frightened enough of his own young recruits with a stony face. 

 

Perhaps he should just talk to the man. “I do appreciate your hospitality in the circumstances. I know it’s not entirely of your own will, but it was sorely needed.” 

 

Flint grunted. 

 

“You and your - the lord and lady - “ James had over-extended his conversational  abilities, he realized too late. He wasn’t sure how to navigate that water. “You’ve all been here quite some time?”

 

Flint glanced over at him and snorted, his upper lip twitching in a sneer. He didn’t deign to reply. 

 

James sighed, weighing his options. On one hand, he could accept Flint’s clear disinterest in conversation. He’d spend the rest of their walk silently admiring the broad expanse of Flint’s back and his sure steps, and hoping he didn’t trip and make more of an idiot of himself. 

 

Alternatively, he could keep trying, hoping the man would refrain from striking him when he probed deeper at his unsettling feelings surrounding Flint’s...lovers? 

“Did you all come here together?” James tried to find a balance between polite inquest and the inherent oddity of asking if one had died and descended into hell with one’s partners. 

 

Flint looked at him sharply and Norrington seriously considered bracing himself for a punch. 

 

“No. Miranda died first,” Flint rounded on Norrington, stopping them in their tracks. His voice was soft and quiet and full of banked fire. The yoke he carried for the buckets of water hardly seemed to strain his thick shoulders, and Norrington wondered what a hit with that power behind it would feel like. He didn’t set the yoke down, but that wasn’t especially reassuring. 

 

“What do you want to know about it? Do you want to know I saw her shot between the eyes in a governor’s mansion - the parlor of an old  _ friend  _ \-  years before I would even lay eyes Thomas again?” Flint’s teeth were bared. “And no, Admiral, I was not the man who pull the fucking trigger.” 

 

Norrington said nothing for a moment, and Flint turned his back on him deliberately. He started to walk again, and Norrington realised this would be the wise point at which to stop questioning the other man. 

 

“...I meant no disrespect. I’m sorry for your loss. Losses.” He cleared his throat. “I am sure seeing her here to welcome you both was...a relief. Or a comfort. The thing we’re all waiting for, at the end.” Someone to come home to - the final coming home. Once, he would have wanted to find it with Elizabeth, when they were ready. He wondered if Andrew waited somewhere out there - hoping he and Theo would take their time. 

 

“She was waiting. They both were. They found me and brought me home.” Flint’s voice was still gruff. “I found my paradise in the end, Admiral, villain though I may have been. Do you imagine you’ll find yours?” 

 

“No.” He said simply. He found it had nearly stopped hurting. Something about Flint’s two paramours still set uneasily with him. 

 

They carried the water back in silence, having seemingly adequately unsettled each other. A big brass tub had been moved into the room Norrington and Silver shared. Norrington wondered where it had been stored before, or if it had existed before at all. He didn’t understand this place, was starting to fear he didn’t  _ like _ it. 

 

James had to clear his throat twice after they filled the bath to get Silver and Flint to break eye contact and for Flint to leave. 

 

He and Silver eyed each other and ended up flipping a coin for first use of the water - they were both incomprehensibly filthy and neither wanted to be the second wash. Norrington won (with a quick and smug grin) and Silver huffed, moving toward the door. 

“Silver.” Norrington called, stopping him. “If you could - I’d like a moment.” Life aboard ships with hundreds of men had stamped out most of his modesty around washing with other men. He nodded to the door as he removed his coat. Silver shut it with a puzzled and apprehensive look. 

 

“Look, Norrington, I’m, ah, very fl - “ He started, clearing his throat. 

 

Norrington rolled his eyes. “Stop there.” He finished undressing and slid into the bath as Silver sat back on the bed. 

 

He had to bite back a gasp of surprise and pleasure as he sank into the water. It was  _ warm _ , by god, and felt like heaven on his aching body. His head dropped back and thumped on the rim of the tub. 

 

“All right, if you’re having me stay just to lord the hedonism over me - “ Silver sounded annoyed and James smirked. 

 

“No, no. I’m...I have a legitimate concern.” James sighed. 

 

“You look extremely concerned,” Silver snorted. “Save some water for me.”

 

Norrington’s lips twitched wryly and he started to scrub. “I know you’ve little familiarity with Lord Hamilton, but what do you know of our other host, the Lady Hamilton?” 

 

Silver sat up a little straighter, his face slipping into its natural state of suspicion. “Mrs. Barlow, when I knew her. We met in person only briefly. Why?” 

 

Norrington chewed over his words for a long moment. “There are things about this house, about the last - day and a half - that feel... _ odd. _ ”

 

“It’s a memory of a cottage home in the land of the dead,” Silver said bluntly. Despite his tone, Norrington thought he might have heard a touch of hesitancy in his voice. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. 

 

“I acknowledge that,” James said patiently, “but something about our hosts, and the house itself - it’s all very welcoming. It’s...kind. But it doesn’t seem quite right.” 

 

Norrington wasn’t sure how to describe the way he’d felt that morning, talking to Lady Hamilton. Not respectfully. It had felt wrong. Wrong like how men shouldn’t have the skin of a shark, wrong like Jones’ slick tentacles around a man’s throat, wrong like flesh hanging like torn leather over bones that refused to stop moving. But how did you explain that?

 

Silver sat quietly as Norrington struggled to find words. “They’ve been...very polite,” he said, finally, when it seemed Norrington wouldn’t find his tongue. “Not unusual for them, or so I was led to believe.” 

 

“Polite,” Norrington agreed, frowning, “Yes, very...accommodating.” 

 

Silver leaned forward, peering at Norrington curiously. “Have you been having lots of chats with the lord and lady of the house?” 

 

“Have you not?” Norrington asked, equally curious. 

 

“They’ve had precious little to say to me,” Silver scoffed, “I am, as ever, an ever-present inconvenience.” 

 

“I’m starting to suspect that’s not the reason,” James mused before dunking his head underwater, hiding briefly from Silver’s inquisitive stare. 

 

He should have realized that would be futile, but he was still startled when he resurfaced and Silver had crossed the room to lean his elbows on the rim of the tub and squint at Norrington’s face. 

 

“God in heaven, does not a one of you have any personal space?” Norrington yelped.

 

“What is  _ that _ supposed to mean?” Silver huffed, his greasy curls trailing over Norrington’s arm. Norrington didn’t think he meant his affronted outburst. 

 

“It means you’re entirely too close,” he grumbled. “Move, I’m getting out.” 

 

Silver rolled his eyes and shifted back, returning to his seat on the bed. He watched unsettlingly as Norrington clambered out of the tub and dried off, dressing self-consciously in Lord Hamilton’s loaned clothing. 

 

“I was speaking to Lady Hamilton this morning, before you woke. That’s all. It was...strange.” He cleared his throat, remembering the scratch of her hem on his skin. It had felt...invasively intimate. 

 

“You’re being maddeningly vague, I hope you realize,” Silver drawled. He didn’t look away until Norrington cleared his throat again. 

 

“Lady Hamilton said that my duty to the living was over.” Norrington finished tucking the borrowed white shirt into grey trousers that did happen to fit remarkably well. “She implied I should stop troubling myself with worldly concerns. Like leaving.” 

 

“They’ve both said hardly two words to me outside of Flint’s company or yours,” Silver murmured thoughtfully, eyeing the now murky water with both longing and trepidation. 

 

“Maybe it’s the smell.” Norrington said helpfully. 

 

Silver glared at him and started undressing aggressively. “What if they’re not talking to me because I’m not like either of you?”

 

“Short, you mean?” Norrington couldn’t say why he thought baiting Silver would help the man’s unease, but it seemed to work. 

 

“You - was there something in the bath water, or are you just feeling particularly difficult today?” Silver growled, hopping out of his trousers without removing the boot. 

 

“I slept poorly,” Norrington shrugged easily. “I assume you’re referring to the fact that you’re alive and the rest of us ought to be cold and buried?” 

 

“Yes, that is exactly what I meant.” Silver started to lower himself into the bath water, and Norrington resolutely looked away from his naked, well-formed arse. 

 

“Are you supposed to get that wet?” He asked about the boot before he could stop himself. 

 

“Get fucked.” Silver snarled, settling in with a splash and sending water sloshing over the edges of the tub. He hooked his bad leg up over the edge and started to scrub at the rest of himself. James also resolutely didn’t look at the pale flash of Silver’s inner thigh. 

 

“I can’t see why they should be fussed I’m alive. What’s it got to do with them? And they’re polite enough when I’m with one of you. Sickeningly sweet, even. It’s enough to make the skin crawl.” 

 

“Yes, it is,” Norrington frowned thoughtfully. To be honest, Silver seemed like the kind of man whose skin was sent crawling at any sign of human kindness - especially directed at himself. And yet, Norrington was inclined to agree with him about their hosts. 

 

“I’ll say this, I remember Mrs. Barlow and the Captain having a lot more rows in the night than this.” Silver seemed to be just the sort of person who eventually splashed all of the water out of the tub. James was extremely thankful he went first. 

 

He likely listened with his ear at the cabin door, Norrington was inexplicably sure of it. “She seems…” it seemed rude to call their host macabre, no matter how accurate it may be. “She tried to convince me to stay with the dead, I’ll say that.” 

 

“From what I remember, she was the last person to advocate for giving up. Changing course, perhaps, but not giving in.” Silver paused in the middle of untangling his hair to consider that. “She was displeased with the Captain for rushing to what she viewed might be his death, but she would never have given up on him.” 

 

“Sometimes it becomes too much, I suppose. You’d rather have the respite.” James frowned down at his borrowed stockings.

 

Silver hummed, relaxing back in the bath. “Yes, I can understand wanting a rest. Especially from that...madness. His madness. The madness he brought out in others.” 

 

“In you?” Norrington asked curiously, before he could stop himself. 

 

Silver was quiet for a long moment. “...I was once a very different person.” 

 

Norrington laid back on the bed, squinting thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Is that why you betrayed him?” He stifled a yawn.

 

Silver opened an eye and scowled. “...It’s. More complicated than that. I betrayed him because I couldn’t watch them die.”

 

“That’s not complicated.” Norrington pointed out. “That’s very simple.” 

 

Silver was the one yawning, now. “It felt more complicated than it sounds.”

 

“You’re a romantic.” Norrington grinned slightly, feeling slow and content and sleepy. 

 

“I - am no such thing.” Silver protested, mid-yawn. He stretched mightily, his shoulders popping as he resettled.  

 

Norrington would have continued the conversation - he was sure it was headed somewhere interesting - but he had slowly begun to drift away, overcome by exhaustion. In moments, he was snoring softly. Silver wasn’t long behind him, head propped on the rim of the tub and water lapping at his belly. James nodded off to thoughts of his earlier conversation with Flint, wondering what his home at the end of the journey would have looked like.

 

Not like this.

 

Not a cottage in the country - no, he didn’t want that. He missed his old home, the whitewashed house he’d kept in Port Royal, small but with windows facing the bay. The view had been spectacular. There had been a window seat, the perfect size to read or write in, overlooking the entire port. He’d always barely fit in it, his legs too long, but his favorite seat in the house nonetheless. 

 

He could see Elizabeth in delicate blue cotton out in the garden, cutting flowers and laughing at a young boy with eyes as green as James’. Their son. Maybe they’d have a daughter, too, with Elizabeth’s wild smirk. He’d teach them both to ride their first pony, and the entire family would sail out together  on sunday afternoons. The entire family, carefree and warm, golden in happiness.

 

Except she’d hate it, he thought suddenly. The vision crashed down, interrupted. She’d hate homemaking, and flowers, and being his respectable wife. She’d never settle for a life without adventure - that had been what endeared her to him, hadn’t it? That they were the same, that they couldn’t abide a calm sea but would rather a rough headwind and storms on the horizon. They longed for a choppy sea, knuckles scraped with rope burn and salt in their eyes. They wanted the men like that, too. 

 

Norrington loved the buck of the deck under his feet, rain pouring, drenched to the bone with a black sail ahead - always just a little too far ahead. St. Elmo’s fire would arc above them, the sparks illuminating the man standing on the other ship as he laughed wildly into the storm. Laughing just like Norrington did, but always a step ahead, always dancing just out of his reach. There was his heaven. 

 

He’d ruined his life for that feeling. He’d ruined them all, chasing the power and position to have that feeling back again. That was what intoxicated him, that was what he would call paradise, not a pastoral home with everything society expected of him and certainly not this cottage - 

 

He sat up with a choked gasp, his chest heaving. It was twilight. The sun had sunk down below the hill at some point, and Silver was starting to sink below the water in the tub. His eyes were closed and air bubbled out of his mouth and nose, silvery and otherworldly.

 

James lunged over and hauled him up clumsily, startling him awake. Silver struggled and struck out at him, coughing up cold bathwater all the while. 

 

“What the  _ fuck _ \--” Silver snarled, startled.

 

“Christ, I’m just trying not to let you drown - “ James protested, releasing him, now soaked and cold. 

 

“--That’s. I fell asleep?” Silver gripped the edges of the tub, still coughing and catching his breath. “I was - I was - ...somewhere else.”  He looked far away and bewildered. 

 

“I know.” Norrington said. It has seemed real, for a moment. “It wasn’t real. I mean - obviously it was a dream - “ 

 

“Felt like…” Silver shook his head. 

 

“I think it’s this place.” Norrington admitted suddenly. “Or those - people. I think we see what they want us to see.” 

 

“The sun’s going down.” Silver said suddenly, hauling himself out of the bath and searching for his clothes. “We can’t leave now, can we? Not out there in the dark.” 

 

“So it would seem.” Norrington agreed grimly, looking out at the rapidly waning light. Already, he could see oddly-coloured eyes winking out from the darkness. 

 

“Captain’s going to be pissed.” Silver said, light and conversational. 

 

“I’m getting the feeling we should definitely not leave your Captain here on his own, no matter his wishes.” Norrington rubbed his face groggily. “This exactly the paradise he’d dream of, isn’t it?”

 

“I think he’d prefer the real Thomas and Miranda.” Silver’s face grew serious. “Which I am beginning to think this is not.” 

 

“Do you think he’ll listen?” Norrington looked askance at Silver. 

 

“I’m going to find out.” Silver pulled his sock and boot on. “He listened to me once.” 

 

Norrington nodded, standing up. “I think you may need assistance.”

 

Silver paused, looking him over. Norrington had the unpleasant sensation that he was being measured. He hoped he wasn’t found wanting. “All right.” 

 

Silver turned and tried to open the door. He yelped almost immediately, snatching his hand back and cradling it to his chest. “Fuck!” 

 

Norrington strode over to the door. “Did it -  _ burn _ you?” 

 

“No, actually, it’s fucking freezing.” Silver stared at the door. 

 

Norrington reached cautiously for it, but he could feel the sharpness of the cold before he even touched the door handle. “That...cannot be good.” 

 

He quickly stepped back, picking up the dregs of his old shirt and wrapping it around his hand. That staved off most of the cold, but as much as he rattled the handle, the door wouldn’t open. “It’s locked.” 

 

“We’re locked the fuck in?” Silver said with a hysterical snort. “Great.”

 

Norrington’s first instinct was annoyance and he shook the door harder, but in between heavy breaths of effort, a familiar smell wafted from under the door. Rotting flesh. Decaying animal. 

 

_ Don’t open the door.  _ The fear whispered to him.  _ Don’t go out there. Go back to sleep. _

 

He glanced over at Silver, seeing the same fear reflected in the other man’s eyes. The exact same. It wasn’t their fear - not wholly. It pressed in from without. 

 

_ Don’t open the door. _ It was almost a real voice now, almost audible in the small room. 

 

Norrington took a deep breath. If he couldn’t unlock it, he’d have to kick it out. He could do it. It was an old, rusted, rickety door. He only had to make himself move. 

 

He squared himself off, gathering will and strength to follow through, and could see Silver shaking. Not in terror alone, but in the effort not to stop Norrington from opening the door. Norrington slammed his boot heel into the wood. It creaked, but didn’t give. He did it again, the shock reverberating up his bones and into his teeth. There was a cracking noise, and he hoped it was the wood. One last kick, hard enough to send him staggering into Silver, finally broke the latch.

  
Silver pushed the door open, only to have it jerked out of his hand and slammed open completely by a howling, frozen wind. He swore loudly and jerked back. Outside, the hall that had been there before was gone - not gone completely, that is, but  _ changed. _ It was not the quaint country house. Thick, peeling silk wallpaper lined the walls facing them. In places, boards were exposed, and everything was inches thick in dust. Above all it was  _ cold. _ Worse than cold. James had never felt a wind like this, cutting through clothing and skin and muscle and sticking straight to his bones. They weren’t in the cottage anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this was a beast to get through.
> 
> dun dun dun


	7. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit gets real

With their “guests” occupied and out of his space for a few hours, Flint had hoped he’d regain a little normality in his home. He settled on the sofa in the sitting room with his latest book, and waited for Thomas and Miranda to find him, as they usually did. And waited.

    At half past, he was only two pages in and growing in agitation. He snapped the book shut and sat up. It was unlike them to linger so long somewhere else. They usually appeared to the crack of a book’s spine like moths to a flame. It wasn’t as if they had a large home. It wasn’t particularly easy to lose someone in here. He got up. They weren’t in the kitchen. They weren’t in the garden. He frowned, heading back into the house. It wasn’t like his lovers to be hard to find.

He finally found them outside their room, heads bent together in quiet commiseration. Once, the sight would have been a familiar one - they’d often huddled together for counsel in their London home, falling to arguing or teasing until James interrupted or joined in. It was odd to realize it had been some time since he’d seen them do so in his presence - Had they done it at all, in all the time they had been here?

    They stopped speaking and looked up at the sound of his steps. They’d never gone so still and quiet in his presence before.

    “What are you two doing back here?” He asked, head cocked in curiosity.

    “Nothing, James.” Miranda’s smile was bland and empty. When had the mirth gone out of her eyes? Was it Silver and Norrington’s arrival, the idea of James going back to Flint and back to war?

    “What are _you_ doing back here?” Thomas asked, his voice playful.

    “Looking for you two, what else? I was going to read.” He trailed off, feeling like he’d missed a step on a staircase. Unbalanced and hanging. “Would you join me?”

    He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like he’d had to ask them something, though once it had been Thomas’ favorite game. _Ask me, James._ Thomas had whispered in his ear. _Ask me what you want, I want to hear you say it._ He shook his head. This was hardly like that. They’d had their own space, their own time in London - even in the scant space he and Thomas had had after Savannah, they’d carved out personal routines and hobbies that crisscrossed and parted from each other. Here, they were never apart.

    The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, eyes dark and fathomless. Flint couldn’t read them. How had one day with Silver back shaken him so badly that he couldn’t read the two of them?

    “Of course, James, we’ll be right along.” Miranda smiled that same flat smile again.

    He nodded, a little off balance, and returned to the sitting room. His head hurt, and he had to wonder if it was Silver’s fault or his own. Had Silver coming here somehow upset some kind of balance in his afterlife? He tried harder and harder to remember individual days and moments from before that man had crossed his fucking doorstep, and he just… couldn’t. It was like a wash of grey fog blotting out anything, spreading further and further back until the tendrils started to grope for Savannah itself, and before. He sat on the settee, shuddering, and picked his book back up. He ran his hands over the cover. _Don Quixote_. He traced his fingers over the embossed letters of the cover, imagining windmills that loomed like giants.

    True to their words, it was hardly ten minutes before Miranda and Thomas finally joined him. He should have found that reassuring, but once his suspicious nature had been piqued it was hard to put it out of mind again. He studied the way they moved, how little they touched each other and how hungrily they reached for him. He thought perhaps there was something not quite right in the way that

Miranda moved - a certain missing charm, the way she had always run her hand up Thomas’ arm.

      He was being ridiculous. Norrington and Silver had come and ruined their peace, disturbed him, and Silver had awoken the animal, Flint part of him that looked for danger and betrayal in even the closest of his companions. There was nothing wrong with Thomas or Miranda, or their home. Everything was as it should be. Birds and insects buzzed outside, the sunlight streamed through the window, and everything was idyllic and quiet.

     He settled into the sofa, Thomas at his back, ever the comforting steady rock to lean on. One of his hands traced over James’ chest lazily, gentle and possessive. Miranda sat opposite James, their knees knocking and ankles tangling companionably as she relaxed to listen to his rough narration. This was the sight that he dreamt of at night - this was paradise. It was perfect. How could it be anything else?

       A fat, lazy horsefly buzzed through the parlor, hardly interrupting James’ reading. He batted distractedly at it as it floated dozily around his face, and paid it no more mind. He was having too much fun inventing a new voice for the beleaguered, loyal Sancho. Miranda chuckled throatily at his poor jokes. It was a miracle they’d had peace from Silver this long. From what Flint had seen, the man still loved to talk. He was likely talking the ear off of his handsome young navy turncoat instead.

       Flint ignored the sour feeling that left in his stomach and took a moment to look up at Miranda, smiling. She smiled back, the enormous black fly crawling over her cheek and across her open eye. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even seem to notice.

_You wouldn’t even have known it was dead until the first flies landed on its eyes._

Sudden, fierce horror seized Flint’s heart. He watched the fly continue its meandering journey. It crawled slowly over her iris, undisturbed by eyelash or the wave of a hand. Her smile was motionless. Fixed.

His chest rose and fell and he knew that though they both may have been dead, he still kept the little habits of life. Breathing, blinking. He must have felt Thomas’ heart beat at some point in the last few years in this place, but his chest felt so still at Flint’s back. He could hear the fly buzzing from across the sofa.

“You’re staying, aren’t you, James?” She asked him smoothly.

“I - hadn’t planned on leaving.” He said slowly. “Though I admit Nassau calls. It doesn’t...call either of you?”

“No.” Miranda said carelessly. “Why would it, with what we have here?”

“You call me more than any place could.” Thomas purred in his ear.

Flint shivered, and he was surprised that for once that low voice inspired fear in him, not arousal. He had the impression that he had a beast at his back, with long teeth and drooling tongue, and not his Thomas at all. “We talked of freeing Nassau. Of showing the world that sweating under the yoke of England was not inevitable. I’ve got to admit I still think of that.”

“Do not think on it, James. Be content. Be with us.” Miranda implored him, the fly still settled on her unsettlingly still and unseeing eye.

“Maybe I  should press Silver for more details - “

“Stay, James.” Thomas said forcefully. His grip tightened on James’ chest.

Now he knew that he had been blinded. His Thomas, his wild and beautiful and determined Thomas. Thomas would have fought forever for the freedom his fellow man deserved. How had he believed for so long? He felt like he’d been asleep until Silver walked up to their door. Now he was waking up, groggy and slow, and realizing that this paradise was not so.

He started to sit up, and the thing wearing Thomas’ face tightened its grip, nails digging into his flesh. It was impossibly strong.

“Stay, James. Sleep.” It murmured in his ear, breathing in deeply at the nape of his neck. Exhaustion washed over him, and his eyelids grew heavy.

He tried to fight it, but it was as if the energy and will was being pulled from him. A fog seemed to settle inside his mind, an insidious contentment that wiped away all other thought.

“Sleep.” Thomas purred again, and James closed his eyes.

 

When Silver and Norrington finally wrestled their door open, it was to a vastly changed hall. The cottage, as they had known it, appeared to be gone. Instead of humble whitewashed walls, Norrington peered out into a high-ceilinged paneled hallway. It was cold, a wild wind whipping past his face and stinging his eyes.

“What in god’s name - “ Silver shouldered past him through the doorway. Norrington could feel when the other man froze, halfway out the door.

“I believe we can say this place is indeed not what it seemed.” Norrington said dryly. He glanced up and down the chilly, decaying hall. It had been grand, once. Now it was thick with dust, and  the tapestries and thick drapery that hung lank on the walls showed telltale signs of fire. The wind couldn’t seem to stir them.

“No,” Silver’s voice was thick. “No, I don’t think it is.” Silver shouldered past him, leaning heavily on his crutch.

The wind wailed eerily and cut sharply through Norrington’s clothing, chilling him to the bone. He had hardly a moment to try to get his bearings before Silver was off down the hall, in his odd, quick gait. Norrington was forced to hurry after him, his longer legs quickly eating up the distance. Silver didn't seem to notice he'd left his funny leather and iron boot behind, abandoned at the side of the bed in their hurry.

“Silver, wait. We hardly know where we’re going. We can't just charge off - We need a way out, and a way _out_.” Norrington was looking around. All the windows were to the left, and heavily frosted. He could see that it was dark outside, but could see nothing else. The charred hangings on the wall were still lank and unmoving, though the sharp wind was still pushing strong fingers through his hair and clothing. He shivered as moonlight pierced through the windowpanes, lighting the tattered fabric in hauntingly familiar cool white light.

“I know the way out.” Silver growled, thumping purposefully down the darkened hall.

“You - “ Norrington hurried after him. Silver moved very fast indeed when he wanted to, determination visible in the set of his shoulders. He couldn’t fathom how Silver would know where they were going.

“Just - trust me.” Silver’s voice was bitter and strained.

    Norrington thought better of rehashing the reasons he didn’t, couldn’t possibly trust the other man, and instead continued to follow him down the still and chilly hall.

They walked for what seemed to be hours, the hall - house? Norrington wondered if there were any other halls - showing no signs of other life. He paused for a moment to peer out one of the heavily curtained windows, still not stirring in the cold breeze, but it was so dark outside that he could see nothing - not even the rest of whatever building they were in, or the ground. When he looked back into the hall, it seemed that Silver had gotten further ahead than he ought to be able - Norrington had almost lost sight of him. Unease rolled in his stomach and he hurried to catch up with the other man.

There were no turns that Norrington could see, no side hallways or other rooms. He glanced at Silver, wondering if he would see his own unease and discomfort reflected on the pirate’s face, but it was the same grizzled blank mask that it had been in their terrifying trek through the forest. His thudding steps were as regular as they could be, and he hadn’t changed his speed.

“Where are we - “

“I know where to go.” Silver growled.

Norrington resigned himself to the long, cold trek. It was hours, perhaps - it felt like hours - before Norrington noticed there was more than just a chill in the air. Warmth trickled toward them from the end of the hall, and far ahead of them the hallway finally seemed to end. A heavy wooden door was their apparent destination, a faint orange glow shining from under the door.

As they came closer, the thick dust on the floor reached up to their ankles. They were wading through it now, and Norrington realised as he looked down that it wasn’t dust at all, but ash. Ash thick on the floor, ash on the curtains and wall hangings, and a faint smell of smoke permeated the air.

    Silver seemed unaffected by all of this, and he stopped at the door, reaching out to push it open.

“Silver, if there’s a fire - “ Norrington began.

“It’s fine.” Silver said flatly. “There’s supposed to be one in here.” He pushed the door ajar, revealing a small, claustrophobic furnace room. There was a squat clay brick - Norrington wouldn’t call it a fireplace, but he wouldn’t call it a stove, either. He thought he might recognize it as a Swedish or Polish stove, meant to circulate warmth throughout the house, though he’d say it was doing a poor job. Someone would have to feed fuel almost constantly into it for it to do any good, he surmised.

    There was a small bed pallet nestled into the corner, close enough to the stove to touch the hot brick. It was big enough for a child, perhaps, if the child was small. Curled up on the thin padding, ratty blanket twisted about his ankles, was Flint. He was asleep, or unconscious, Norrington couldn’t be sure.

    Silver growled and crutched his way angrily over to Flint. “Wake up!”

    Norrington wasn’t particularly surprised that it didn’t immediately work. Silver prodded Flint with his crutch until the other man groaned and squinted up at him. “The fuck do you want?"

You had to admire his commitment to disgruntlement, Norrington thought. Flint sat up slowly, hand going to his head gingerly. Norrington couldn’t see a bruise, but Flint had the hazy and confused look of a man soundly knocked about the head.

“Get _up_.” Silver hissed, nudging him sharply again.

“Where are Thomas and Miranda?” Flint sat, rubbing his face. “Where - they were - there’s...something - “

“We need to leave, captain, before they come _back_.”

“What are you talking about?” Flint squinted up at them. “What’s - going on - there was something wrong with Miranda. Something…”

“It’s not _them_ , captain, it never was. It was all just a lie. You should be familiar with the concept, now get _up._ ” Silver tugged on his former captain’s arm.

    Flint finally staggered to his feet, swaying gently and looking lost and pained. Norrington couldn’t blame him. He’d had everything he’d wanted in that little cottage, and Norrington had to wonder what would have happened to Flint if they had never come here. Would he have spent his afterlife in blissful ignorance, in at least a semblance of his own personal paradise?

“Fuck’s going on? My head feels - “ Flint swayed dangerously.

    Norrington and Silver seemed to simultaneously realize that Flint’s reluctance wasn’t all stubbornness. Silver stopped prodding him and stepped closer as Flint moved slowly away from the pallet and seemed to list and stagger like a man who hadn’t yet rediscovered his landlegs. He moved slowly, looked exhausted, and his face was slack and gray. There was even more gray threading through his copper hair than before. Silver stepped closer and ducked under Flint’s arm, carefully positioning his crutch to support them both.

“You look terrible.” Silver surveyed Flint’s face, scant inches away. Norrington supposed he must have a good view. “Like an old man.”

“I am an old man.” Flint groused as Norrington came over to his other side. With both of them supporting him, they took only a moment to sort out all of their limbs and start a shaky path across the room. “I feel like - jerky. Old, dry meat.” Flint grumbled, his head lolling slightly against Silver’s.

They limped across the room to the doorway, the heat beginning to feel stifling even after the bitter cold of the hall before.

“What is this place?” Flint squinted behind them at the furnace room. “Some - heating room? Not the Bahamas.”

“No, it’s not.” Silver sighed, exhausted.

Norrington couldn’t miss the sharp glance Flint threw the other man, curiosity cutting through his haze. They limped as a whole toward the heavy wooden door, and Norrington reached out to push it open.

_sssSsolomoonnnnnn_

      It was more the hiss of the cold winter wind through the doorway than anything like a voice.

     Norrington froze, staring out into the dark gaping maw of the hallway. Moonlight lanced across the floorboards and he thought he could hear, under the wail of the wind, the soft rattle of bone on hardwood.

     Silver's step faltered, but after his initial apparent surprise, he pulled the other two men forward with renewed urgency.

“Why do you always get me into these situations?” He growled to Flint. “This way. Quick, before she finds us.”

He steered them around a corner that Norrington could swear hadn't been there before.

“Who?” Flint asked, still staggering and weaving between them.

Norrington couldn't help reflecting on how little these halls resembled the cozy and warm cottage of the Hamiltons. There was no trace of that modest and welcoming home around them now, and no way they could have traveled out of it under their own power. He could only think that perhaps it had never been here at all. What Thomas and Miranda Hamilton were in truth, he couldn't say. Flint himself seemed as whole and human as they did, from his warmth pressed to Norrington's side. Had they felt so real? Norrington couldn't recall actually touching them, but Flint had. Flint himself was a solid, feverishly warm presence pressed to Norrington’s side.

   They staggered as quickly down the hall as they could, though it once again seemed to stretch without end.

“There should be a fucking staircase here - “ Silver snarled.

“Why do you know where we are?” Flint asked, slow and quiet.

Silver didn't answer, forcing the other two men to keep forging ahead. “We need down. We're a floor up.”

_Ssssolomonnn_

The wind hissed again, crawling up the back of Norrington's neck. He shivered, steeling himself to keep his step from faltering. “I'd say they're looking for us.” He said quietly, startled to realize how raspy his voice sounded. He hadn't spoken in some time, and the icy air scraped through his throat.

Silver nodded, his mouth a tight line of worry. He seemed to have aged too, though not quite so pronouncedly as Flint; his years and regrets just seemed to pull at the edges of his eyes and mouth. Norrington wondered what he looked like to them. Could they see the hypocrisy and betrayal etched in the lines of his face?

_ssssolomoooon, ssstayyy_

Silver swallowed, his throat clicking in the dry air. “We have to get down.” He said hoarsely.

The wind kicked up into a constant moan as the three men continued to struggle down the hallway, howling in their ears its constant demand.

_sssSstaaaay, ssstayyy_

Norrington let out a cry of relief when a branch to the right appeared before them in their constant seeming stumble-limp, all three lurching toward it like a guiding light. Their momentum was so great that they almost stumbled into the _thing_ that had once worn Miranda, looming just around the blind corner of their desperate turn.

It was hunched and wailing, but still impossibly taller than them; it looked as if it had stretched the frame and skin if Miranda as much as it could, thin and knobbly with joints bulging under skin so taut it looked like it might split along the seams it surely must possess. Its eyes were pitch black and rolling like a mad horse, foam dripping from its fanged mouth just the same.

_Solomon!_ It seemed to shriek along with the wind. _ssStealing again! Alwayss sstealing!_

Silver seemed frozen in the face of the grotesquely stretched thing, Flint just as still on Norrington's side. Both stared horrified into the thing's face, its sharp and distended fingers with their wicked claws perilously close to the men, flexing with the urge to grasp and hold.

Norrington turned his head, hoping the could be dragged back, an escape still to be made - bit there, a scant breath behind them, hulked the thing's partner.

It, too, was still wearing a mockery of Thomas Hamilton. Norrington was glad that Flint's attention was fixed on the horror of his one terribly stretched monster of a lover, because the other man was even worse to behold. Where Miranda had been stretched over a frame terribly, terribly long, the thing wearing Thomas seemed to have deflated him. Thomas’ face fell slack and rubbery over a squat, lumpy frame, the face's mouth hanging open and glistening red over a row of massive, flat.teeth that gnashed constantly like the crackle of embers.

Where the tallest thing's eyes rolled constantly and unfocusing, the squat thing seemed to stare flatly through Norrington with an even, milky, unconcerned gaze. It did not share the shreiking miranda-thing's anxieties. Its gaze seemed to say simply that it was hungry, and its dinner was before it, and it would soon be able to feast.

With no way forward and no way back, Norrington was almost as frozen as the two traumatized men beside him. He tightened his fist in the sweaty fabric at the small of Flint's back.

“Fuck you, hag!” Silver spat in the face of the tallest creature, and Norrington was sure he could sense when the other man also turned, mere seconds after he did - though it had seemed an eternity - and froze.

_ssSolomon! Little lossst liar! You will ssstay!_ She wailed.

They both could feel Flint start to turn, and Silver's broad hand squeezed his shoulder like a vice, stopping him from turning and seeing the monstrosity in Thomas’ skin.

Norrington felt like time moved at a crawl. He watched drool, thick and yellow, drip from the squat creature's teeth. It reeked of sulfur, overpowering, and he turned his head for a breath of air even if it was icy cold.

He took a deep breath, and to his shock, he tasted salt in the air. He felt like he was opening his eyes again; next to them, curtains fluttered in the breeze from a cracked open window. Had it been there before?

He had no time for thinking it through. No plan to be hatched here. He simply tightened his grip on Flint once more and dragged him along, hoping that Silver's powerful grasp of the other man would pull him along as well. It was one, two, three long strides as the creatures’ wailing and gnashing reached fever pitch, sounding like an out of control blaze, _like a mansion burning in winter -_

Norrington hurled all three of them through the open window and into a twenty foot drop.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I am sorry this update took so long! Life has been...life. I appreciate the comments and interest people have shown in this weird sideshow of a crossover so far! I haven't abandoned it at all, and I do have a lot still planned for this ride, so I thank you guys for your patience and I promise there's more weird shit ahead.


End file.
